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THE SUBCONSCIOUS. Large crown 8vo, $2.50, 

net. Postage extra. 
FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY. Large 

crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS 



BY 

JOSEPH JASTEOW 

PEOFESSOR OP PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 




JeiSfrmrrteBittagl 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

dtfce Citoer#&e pxtgg, Cambri&0e 

1906 



6 



pJBRRRY of CONGRESS 
Two GoDies Received 

MAY 11 1906 

Copyright Entry 

JLASS CL XXc, No, 

COPY B. 



*'. 



COPYRIGHT 1905 BY JOSEPH JASTROW 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published May iqob 



TO DR. JOHN MADISON TAYLOR 

IN APPRECIATION OF THE RARE PRACTITIONER 
WHO COMBINES WITH PROFESSIONAL ACUMEN 
A SUSTAINING SYMPATHY AND A KEEN INSIGHT 
INTO THE PSYCHIC FAILINGS OF COMPLEX HUMANITY 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this essay in descriptive psy- 
chology is to provide a survey of a comprehensive 
aspect of human psychic endowment. The very 
definition of psychology as the science of con- 
sciousness has tended to focus attention upon 
conditions of high introspective lucidity, and, by 
implication, to look upon areas from which such 
illumination is withdrawn, as quite too obscurely 
lighted for profitable examination. Thus casually 
visited, and with no vital share in the psycholo- 
gist's concerns, the abode of the subconscious 
has drifted into the service of a lumber-room, in 
which to deposit what finds no place in the mind's 
active economies. 

The word subconscious has a dubious sound ; 
and those to whom it brings slight illumination 
associate it with questionable phenomena of rare 
occurrence and unusual significance. It should be 
a homely term ; and its place is close to the hearth 
of our psychological interests. The word, in com- 
pany with others of analogous origin, has been 
made the symbol of an inner mystery, a pale 
double of ourselves, disporting itself strangely 
when our oversight is relaxed, and capable, if only 



viii PREFACE 

its excursions could be followed, of overthrowing 
the limitations of sense and of discounting our 
most accredited psychological currency. Not 
mainly as a corrective to such unwarranted mis- 
conception, — though quite willing that the work 
should be thus serviceable, — but as a statement of 
its natural import, its comprehensive scope in the 
familiar fields of normal life and in the perplexing 
mazes of the abnormal, I have undertaken a sys- 
tematic exposition of subconscious functioning. 
It requires a volume to convey a proper conception 
of the intimacy of such participation in the nor- 
mal trend of the mind's affairs ; and, with simi- 
larly motived excursions into the abnormal field, 
of the instructive issues that ensue when its role 
is imperfectly played. There is, indeed, no corner 
of the mental establishment that can well remain 
un visited, if one would appreciate the pervasive- 
ness of this influence in the household. It is for 
such a tour of inspection, undertaken with sys- 
tematic purpose, that the book offers its services 
as a modest cicerone. 

Apart from the extensive data recorded with 
the interest of the professional student of men- 
tal disorder, the resources that the prospector in 
these fields finds at command are, though eagerly 
availed of, not notably helpful to his projects. I 
have given sparing notice of the many sources 
examined j for I commonly found little profit in 



PREFACE ix 

such pursuit, and think it safe to assume that 
only the interest of one to whom the literature is 
known, would take heed of what I might thus 
have offered. I have given credit, when it seemed 
pertinent, to the data and the expositions that 
have helped me, and have been content with that. 
Only a few, and in the main slight general sur- 
veys of the field have been published. The one 
notable exception is the work of the late Mr. Fred- 
eric W. H. Myers (" Human Personality," 2 vols. 
1903). In respect to that, I record with pleasure 
my appreciation of the ability and devotion of the 
author, as well as of the skill of his presentations ; 
and I record with regret, that in spite of a common 
interest in the same ranges of phenomena, and a 
fair measure of agreement in the interpretation 
of the more objective and verifiable data, I yet 
find my point of view so little in accord with his, 
that I have been able to profit but slightly by his 
discerning labors. It is rare that any writer on 
psychology can carry through his purpose without 
acknowledging his obligations to Professor Wil- 
liam James, — a privilege that I am wholly un- 
willing to forego. Dr. Morton Prince has kindly 
revised my account of his interesting " case." 
There is hardly a page of the book that is not 
under obligations to the critical care of my wife. 

Joseph Jastrow. 

Madison, Wisconsin, March, 1906. 



CONTENTS 

PART I — NORMAL 

CHAPTER PAOE 

I. Introduction 3 

II. The Function of Consciousness .... 7 

III. Consciousness and the Nervous System . . . 16 

IV. Consciousness and Volition 34 

V. The Distribution of Attention 50 

VI. The Mechanism of Consciousness .... 64 

VII. The Subconscious in Mental Procedure . . .82 

VIII. The Subconscious Maturing of Thought . . 98 

IX. The Lapses of Consciousness 116 

X. Self-Consciousness 140 

PART II — ABNORMAL 

I. The Range of the Abnormal 163 

II. Dream-Consciousness 175 

III. The Variants of Dream-Consciousness . . . 222 

IV. The Dissociated Consciousness .... 266 
V. The Genesis of Altered Personality . . . 323 

VI. Disintegrating Lapses of Personality . . . 374 

PART III — THEORETICAL 

I. The Conception of the Subconscious . . .411 

II. The Subconscious as Abnormal .... 464 

III. Conclusion 530 

Index 545 



PART I 

NORMAL 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS 



INTRODUCTION 

The submerged life of the mind, however seem- 
ingly mysterious and really elusive, yet persistently 
attracts the naturalist of the mental world. At 
favorable moments, when the sea of consciousness 
is unruffled and calm contemplation seems promis- 
ing, he peers intently into the shadowy depths, and 
is disappointed to find how little he can distinguish 
of what lies below the surface, how constantly the 
waters send back merely the reflection — partly 
distorted — of his own familiar features. His cu- 
riosity unsatisfied, he is tempted to wish for the 
intervention of some fairy of kindly disposition 
toward psychologists, who would invest him with 
a magical diving-suit enabling him to sink below 
the waters and examine leisurely the life of those 
hidden depths, while maintaining a supply of fresh 
air from the consciousness above. For psychologist 
and layman alike, the ordinary endowment permits 
only a plunge for a moment or two into the waters 
of the subconscious, and a return to the surface 
with some brief glimpse of the world below. If we 



4 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

remain there longer, our vision becomes clouded, 
impressions become vague, the memory uncertain ; 
we seem absorbed in close contemplation, and yet 
but dimly realize what it is we contemplate ; we 
dream — and hardly know upon awakening what 
was really seen and what imagined. At times 
strange tales are told of those depths, — of curious 
forms of life, part of this world and part sugges- 
tive of some unreal world beyond. Monsters and 
sprites and elves are there, who on rare occasions, 
it is said, disport themselves upon the tops of the 
waves, much to the consternation of those who 
bring the tale. Ghosts of our former, or of our 
other selves are said to lurk in this night-side of 
mind, at times reasserting their portion in the con- 
scious life that alone we call our own. As we turn 
to observe them, to stare at them with the waking 
eye, the cock crows, the dawn of consciousness 
looms above the horizon ; we are again awake — 
and the ghosts have vanished. 

It is certainly not easy to discover how this other 
half — supposing that it be our other half — lives, 
and where it moves and whence it has its being. 
In some measure the difficulty seems inherent in 
the nature of what, without thereby solving the 
riddle, we are content to speak of as consciousness. 
For this word we have no true synonym ; it ex- 
presses something that is too intimately part and 
parcel of our mental existence to be readily para- 



INTRODUCTION 5 

phrased. It represents the most fundamental of all 
the conceptions by means of which we aim to make 
intelligible the story of our intellectual life. For- 
tunately it is easier to render an acceptable account 
of what consciousness effects than of what it is ; 
and it is solely with the practical workings of con- 
sciousness that we shall be concerned in this study. 
The first step in the inquiry as to how we come to 
know what we do, to think and feel and act as we 
do, brings conspicuously before us the supreme 
service of consciousness ; the term sums up for 
our practical understanding the most comprehen- 
sive aspect of psychic activity. We realize that 
— neglecting extreme instances — we are always 
intently or diffusely, observingly or reflectively, 
actively or passively, pleasantly or unpleasantly 
conscious ; that however fluctuating its protean as- 
pects, consciousness is continuously present in all 
psychic life ; that to live means for us to be vari- 
ously conscious. In this sense we know intimately 
and familiarly the role of consciousness as a per- 
vading influence in our mental existence ; in this 
sense we can intelligibly discuss its operations, 
its efficiency, its sphere of influence. And that 
is all that is requisite for the special purpose of 
the present undertaking, — which is the more 
precise comprehension of those manifestations 
of consciousness, and of those varieties of its 
activities, that take place below the threshold of our 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS 



fully waking minds, those subconscious products 
of our intelligence wrought — to appropriate Dr. 
Holmes's phrase — in the underground workshop 
of thought. 



II 

THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

What, then, is the efficiency and scope and pur- 
pose — or in brief, the function — of ordinary 
consciousness ? To approach this question profita- 
bly, we must recognize certain broad and readily 
verifiable distinctions. The most casual psycholo- 
gist will have noticed that his consciousness may 
be directed inwardly towards experiences within 
himself, or externally towards something occurring 
in the environment without. By the activity of the 
one kind I am made aware at the present moment 
that I still have some of the unpleasant after-effects 
of a lingering cold in the head, that I have been 
wearing a new pair of boots all day, that occasion- 
ally I still feel a little annoyed because in the after- 
dinner speech I made last night I omitted some of 
my best points, that in the interstices of the at- 
tention which I am giving to my present task I am 
groping about to recall the address of one of my 
correspondents, that I am just dismissing from my 
attention a rambling reexperiencing of my last 
night's dream, and that in anticipation of the writ- 
ing of a note — for which I must in a moment 
interrupt my present occupation — I am looking 



8 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

about for the most presentable reasons for declin- 
ing an invitation that promises little pleasure. 1 By 
the other form of awareness I come to realize — 
and as before to a more or less absorbing extent 
— that the inkstand needs refilling, that the wind 
is blowing in the trees, that the clock is sounding a 
premonitory whirr which I recognize as the herald 
preceding by a few minutes the stroke of the hour, 
that the lamp has been smoking, and that my paper 
is lying partly in the shadow of a row of books to 
my left. Naturally these several forms and direc- 
tions of awareness do not appear with equal dis- 
tinctness at the same moment. They are fitfully 
revealed by the sweep of the search-light of atten- 
tion as it plays upon this and that detail of the 
composite picture ; yet they are all present in the 
shadowy background and contribute something to 
the genre of the whole. Naturally also do the two 
kinds and the several manifestations of awareness 
constantly intermingle and antagonize and coop- 
erate in the ceaseless flow of moods and states, 
of occupations and attentions, — wave upon wave 
of complex emotional, intellectual, and volitional 
content. Thus I may explain that it was because I 
was too much absorbed in my inward contempla- 

1 I am here throwing together the awareness by inner observa- 
tion of bodily sensations, and of the elaborate products of memory, 
reflection, desire, intent, and the like. The distinctive status of 
the two is recognized when a more careful analysis becomes 
necessary. 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 9 

tions that I did not sooner notice the soot from 
the lamp ; and because of an indolent disinclina- 
tion to interrupt my present business that I was 
not sufficiently disturbed by the shadow on my 
paper to induce me to stop and remove the pile 
of books. The inward awareness of the type that 
is concerned with organic sensations is likely to 
have a decided flavor of pleasure or pain, an im- 
mediate bearing upon the welfare of the body. The 
outward awareness is information-bringing in pur- 
pose ; it assumes an intellectual attitude presenting 
the query : What is this that affects my senses ? 
Such curiosity in regard to the conditions that 
confront us will naturally be utilized in the ser- 
vice of the evolutionary struggle that animates and 
directs conduct. It is because consciousness, like 
other endowments, has proved of use in securing 
for the individual the utmost expansion of his life 
possibilities, that it has been developed so far and 
just as we now enjoy it. The evolution of con- 
sciousness has been shaped by the results of its 
functional utility; which means that we possess 
the particular kinds and degrees of consciousness 
that we normally exercise, because in our environ- 
ment those forms of consciousness have proved 
themselves, all things considered, the most service- 
able. 

Consider in this light the physiological func- 
tions ; normally, many of these give rise to no sen- 



10 THE SUBSCONSCIOUS 

sations whatever. Glands are secreting, waste mat- 
ter is accumulating, nutriment is being absorbed, 
and an indefinite complex of upbuilding and down- 
tearing changes are g ag on in all the systems 
of the bodily economy with a minimum of accom- 
panying sensation ; they go on equally well when 
the brain is drowsy with sleep, or drugged with 
anaesthetics. In health these functions conduct 
themselves invisibly, silently, imperceptibly — like 
well-trained servants. But when the delicate bal- 
ance of one or another of these functions is inter- 
fered with, all sorts of sensations, more or less 
vaguely localized and indefinitely realized and diffi- 
cult to describe, but all variously unpleasant, make 
themselves known. When the servants do not 
perform their duties properly, the master's com- 
fort is disturbed, of which disturbance he becomes 
unpleasantly aware. Occasionally, by way of com- 
pensation, we seem really to enjoy the feeling of 
unusual bodily well-being ; such is the reaction of a 
vigorous body to the glow of exercise, or the tonic 
that comes with the breezes of the sea, or the 
balm of those rare days in June. Feelings of this 
kind are probably realized in terms of activities, 
such as ease of movement and respiration, with 
which a minor degree of awareness is commonly 
experienced. Getting well is rarely a positive joy, 
but in the main a vaguely or keenly felt release 
from pain and discomfort. The very diversity of 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 11 

the catalogue of pains, along with the difficulty 
of their description, offers a source of perplexity 
to the physician and taxes the introspective skill 
of the patient. They are* jture' s-^ cries of distress, 
a peremptory demand to a hearing before con- 
sciousness, even to the exclusion of every other 
demand. An intense pain monopolizes the atten- 
tion and prevents all rational thought or interest 
in the ordinary affairs of life ; among the mental 
tokens of convalescence is the resumption of con- 
cern in less subjective matters than aches and 
bodily symptoms. The fact that there is normally 
no consciousness connected with the performance 
of function of so many of our bodily organs finds 
explanation in the lack of any useful service that 
could thus be ministered. We do not need to be, 
surely have no desire to be conscious of the work- 
ings of our livers or of our intestines ; it would be 
a superfluous kind of awareness, and thus has not 
been developed. 1 Likewise have we no sensation, 
in turning the eyes to the light, of the closing in 
of the pupil to shut out the glare ; the process 

1 " Movements of viscera that do not discharge their contents 
externally have no accompanying sensation. No useful purpose 
can be served by the acquisition of such a sensation, and therefore 
no such sensation has been acquired. Had it been as important 
to the welfare of the individual to be as aware of the distention 
and emptying of his gall bladder as of the distention and empty- 
ing of his urinary bladder, no doubt the sensations accompanying 
these conditions in the one would have been as vivid as in the case 
of the other." — Mercier. 



12 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

goes on feelinglessly, makes no report to con- 
sciousness because none is needed. There seem 
established within the body provisions for rare 
and unusual forms of awareness in connection 
with disturbance of function, along with a service- 
able apportionment of consciousness among the 
normally functioning activities. 

The principle of utility thus appears as effective 
in the workings of the inherited, fundamentally 
physiological functions ; and it appears likewise in 
the manner of our possession of a large number 
of acquired habit activities that ordinarily demand 
but a minimum of conscious attention, and are 
performed upon appropriate occasions at the com- 
mand of an intelligence that directs them only 
sufficiently to recognize the appropriateness of the 
occasion ; or, it may be, by an almost instinctive 
response to the presence of their natural stimuli. 
By this means the higher forms of conscious atten- 
tion are reserved for those activities that require 
such concentration ; while the centres controlling 
the more habitual actions need no direct initiative 
of their chief to attend to the common demands 
of daily life; all of which is obviously a highly 
economical division of labor. Once over the heroic 
infantile struggles with equilibration, we need not 
concern ourselves with how we walk ; and after a 
language has been learned, we may devote the at- 
tention to thinking of what we wish to say and let 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 13 

the speech-habits attend to the utterance. We need 
not throw the maximum of our reflection upon the 
guiding of the pen, but upon the content of what 
■we wish to write. We can appreciate the bright 
sallies of our neighbor at a dinner party, and set 
our wits to work for an equally apt repartee, while 
our hands are manipulating knife and fork, and 
the teeth and their partners are preparing the food 
for digestion. Yet our central consciousness is 
constantly on the alert, ready to take charge of the 
process when there is any need, when the routine 
of habit is diverged from. When in walking we 
come to the edge of a hill or to the crossing of a 
crowded street or to a stretch of slippery sidewalk, 
we consciously pick our steps ; when speaking in 
public in a hall of poor acoustic qualities, or when 
speaking to a foreigner or to a person hard of hear- 
ing, we consciously attend to our enunciation ; 
when at the table we are served with fish, we give 
enough attention to the machinery of mastication 
so as not to swallow the bones; and when we wish 
to be sure to use the proper fork or spoon for the 
salad or sherbet, we deliberately stop and choose. 
What is thus accomplished by the principle of 
utility is the delegation of as many as possible of 
the frequently repeated routine activities to semi- 
automatic mechanisms, and the consequent free- 
dom more effectively to devote the main directive 
attention to complex deliberation and expression. 



14 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The same principle of utility may be discovered 
in the purpose served by the highest forms of 
reflective consciousness. Such conscious reflec- 
tion has made possible within the lifetime of the 
individual an enormously variable complexity of 
appropriate responses that, without its aid, would 
have required — supposing it to be possible for 
them to have been acquired at all — the sacrifice 
of countless generations to bring about by the 
slow and circuitous establishment of the survival 
of the fittest. The measure of consciousness that 
accompanies and guides conduct is influential in 
determining the direction and the efficiency of 
such conduct. Here a definitely formulated policy, 
there a deeply felt but imperfectly analyzed con- 
viction, now an unreasonable but decidedly power- 
ful prejudice, and again an irresistible and incom- 
prehensible impulse, — these suggest the range of 
the motives of conduct, each of which implies a 
certain manner and distribution of awareness, and 
each of which also suggests the intellectual rank 
and the practical mode of working of its type of 
reflective conduct. Students of human progress 
recognize in the conscious elaboration of means 
and measures an increasingly distinctive factor 
in the civilizing movement of the ages. Much of 
what we approve and of what we avoid, we now 
direct by reasons of which we are or may become 
quite definitely aware, whereas the attitude of 



- - ■-% 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 15 

former generations was — as the attitude of the 
less reflective portions of the community still is 
— largely a matter of vaguely realized impulse 
and inclination. Conscious evolution has in these 
psychological days been properly recognized as 
coordinate in importance with the other domi- 
nant factors of that illuminating conception of 
the mainsprings of life. 



Ill 

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 

All forms of consciousness occur in intimate 
dependence upon some mode of working of our 
nervous system. Of the intrinsic nature of the 
bond or manner of correlation between some hy- 
pothetical activity in the nervous elements and 
the mental phenomena known by us through con- 
sciousness, we know next to nothing. Yet the 
path of the investigation is by no means blocked ; 
we know many things about the distribution of 
this correspondence that are distinctly helpful. 
To begin with, it brings about a unified, coordi- 
nated conduct of all parts of the body ; that eye 
and ear and hand and tongue and head and limb 
shall act in concord. In order that the right hand 
may know what the left hand is doing there must 
be some common authority to which the actions 
of both are reported. The vast army of organized 
activities, though in a system very different from 
that of an army of men, may be thought of as 
combined in groups ; and these with complex rela- 
tions to other groups, no one precisely duplicating 
the service of any of the others ; and each group 
liable to be combined with others for different 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 17 

offices ; and all under the regulated command 
of leaders ; and the leaders, in turn, of coordi- 
nate or subordinate authority to other command- 
ers ; and yet all in varying measure under the 
controlling and paramount directorship of the 
commander-in-chief. Many, indeed most, of the 
details of the mental campaign do not come to 
him for decision ; and those of which he does 
take cognizance reach him indirectly and progres- 
sively through well-organized channels ; others 
he ordinarily intrusts to subordinates, but on 
critical occasions reserves their direction for his 
personal attention, at times reversing the orders 
or checking the intentions of his commissioned 
officers. From the physiological arrangements 
we know also that the only mode of carrying out 
the commands, by whatever authority issued, is 
through the muscles ; these alone can transform 
the impulses into movements. The higher centres 
cannot directly set muscles into action, but can do 
so only by influencing those other groups of cen- 
tres that are specifically organized to discharge 
along motor routes. It is accordingly, under nor- 
mal circumstances, through the cooperation of 
the two that the directive activities reach actual 
expression in conduct. Further, we know that it 
is with the most highly developed nerve-centres 
— with the brain and specifically with the most 
elaborately organized centres of the brain — that 



18 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

this directing consciousness is most intimately 
associated. Conscious activity of the type that we 
usually have in mind is activity of these choicest 
products of the evolutionary process, — the gray 
matter of the cortex of the human brain. While 
it is thus helpful to bear in mind the depend- 
ence of consciousness upon the integrity of this 
nervous substratum, and to learn as much as we 
can of the nature of the changes that go on in 
the nervous system concomitant with varieties of 
mental experience, it should not be overlooked 
that we know indefinitely more of the mental 
experiences than we do of the nervous concom- 
itants. Our knowledge of consciousness remains 
predominantly and inevitably psychological. 

It is hardly necessary to indicate at all exten- 
sively the mutual interrelations of brain functions 
and consciousness ; it is sufficient to recall that a 
blow on the head, or the sudden withdrawal of 
blood from the brain, as in fainting, or the in- 
halation of chloroform, bring about so decided an 
alteration of consciousness as to produce a state 
of unconsciousness ; that a sufficient dose of qui- 
nine will induce a singing in the ears ; of santonin 
will affect our color sensations ; of alcohol will 
release the tension of self-restraint and induce the 
freer flow of sentiment and speech, and, in the 
more acute stages of its action, result in motor 
entanglement, in stupor, or in terrifying halluci- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 19 

nations ; of hasheesh will glorify the mental at- 
mosphere and transport the dreamer to an earthly- 
paradise ; of mescal will present luxurious and 
brilliant artistic pageants ; of morphium will bring 
painless sleep to an overwrought mind and racked 
body. Bodily ailments, by their involvement of 
one or another portion of the nervous system, bring 
with them characteristic changes in the intellec- 
tual behavior, such as the over-sensitive irritability 
of nervous temperaments, or the melancholic tinge 
that accompanies disorders of the viscera below 
the diaphragm ; and again — though the precise 
relations in each case remain unknown — quite 
probably all of our minor fluctuations of mood and 
impulse, of flow of wit or befogged dullness, of 
capacity and energy, — the ups and downs of the 
mental meteorology, — are connected with slight 
and obscure changes in this wonderfully intricate 
nervous system of ours. All this is familiar but 
profoundly significant. 

It will be adequate to our present pursuit to 
notice the variety of distribution of the typical 
forms of consciousness, and of their correspond- 
ences in the nervous centres, by the directive 
guidance of which the mental and bodily functions 
are discharged. It may be maintained that those 
functions have a direct psychological significance 
that normally possess at least a potential repre- 
sentation in consciousness ; and the more habitual 



20 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

and indispensable the representation, the more 
completely and intrinsically psychological the ac- 
tivity. Rank in the hierarchy of the nervous cen- 
tres is largely concomitant with the degree and 
kind of recognition accorded by the throne of 
consciousness. The highest rank is held by those 
offices that require the exclusive attention of an 
alert consciousness for their proper performance. 
The intermediate ranks are many, and demand for 
their execution a variable degree of conscious 
attention, descending by slight grades to those 
that ordinarily require none at all, and, indeed, 
are better off without it. We are not ordinarily 
conscious of winking, but may become so by 
directing the attention thereto. We may similarly 
become aware of our respiration or of the beat 
of the pulse, but ordinarily are both content and 
able to exclude these from the field of attention. 
Such functions possess but a small measure of 
psychological import ; and their investigation be- 
longs in the main to the physiologist. The same 
holds true of swallowing, coughing, yawning, and 
of a considerable aggregate of rhythmical, occa- 
sional, and irregularly periodic functions that enter 
into the incidents of life and development. Such 
functions are described as ministered to by the 
lower centres, and participate in the normal life 
of the body with but little demand upon conscious- 
ness. Yet of these it is important to note that the 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 21 

manner of their activity is liable to slight or pro- 
nounced modification by reason of the variation 
of mental and nervous temperaments and condi- 
tions. Though normally we receive no report of 
the uninterrupted beat of the heart and of the 
rhythm of the respiration, yet the nervous patient 
may lie awake for hours trying to dismiss from 
his over-sensitive consciousness the painfully felt 
stroke of his pulse. 1 The modifications of breath- 
ing induced by strong emotions are both outwardly 
and inwardly observable. When a timid speaker 
faces his audience, the breaking of the voice, the 
hesitation of speech, the hurried breathing with 
occasional gasps or gulps, betray his disquietude, 
and more painfully to himself than to others. 
Later, when well under way and absorbed in his 
task, his breath comes freely and unconsciously. 
All forms of violent emotion react upon the sub- 
strata of consciousness and disturb the even tenor 
of its ways, and thus participate to make or 
mar the quality of the performance of higher and 
lower centres alike. The angry person cannot 
think clearly, and exhibits his anger in a familiar 
complex of physiological signs ; the lover has a 
perspective of life that at least in one respect 
is unshared by others, who witness with mixed 
emotions the involuntary betrayal of his optimis- 

1 For this enforced inner attention to bodily functions the French 
have an apt phrase, S'ecouter vivre — to listen to one's self live. 



22 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tic beatitude ; the victim of stage fright loses his 
power of thought and speech, as he becomes dis- 
tressingly aware that his breath chokes him and 
that his knees seem strangely insecure ; while sud- 
den terror or surprise may momentarily paralyze 
both thought and muscles, may daze and throw 
out of function the lowly and habitual as well 
as the reflective and discerning mental habits. 1 
It is true that the connection of disturbances of 
nerve-centres with such alterations of conscious- 
ness as these proves upon close analysis to be some- 
what inferential in character ; but the grounds of 
our belief, in spite of ignorance of detail, remain 
cogent, comprehensive, and consistent. 

It has thus been set forth that such functions 
as occupy a lower rank in the psychological scale, 
and normally demand but a modest share of 
awareness, are none the less modified, and that 
often against the will, under the influence of dis- 
tinctly psychological occasions. Such occasions 
bring with them a vague or pronounced aware- 
ness of inner disturbance ; and it is the distinc- 
tive group of sensations thus aroused that in the 
view of certain psychologists constitutes the essen- 
tial content of the emotion, which consciousness 

1 It is interesting to note that upon such occasions of sudden 
shock that momentarily throws all functioning out of control, we 
resort to a physiological corrective ; we take a stimulant to steady 
the nerves. 



- ..-• : - - - 



-^ 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 23 

reports in psychological terms. Of actions that 
ordinarily demand a more moderate range of 
awareness and thus stand intermediate in psycho- 
logical rank, the familiar motor complexes and 
intellectual habits furnish sufficient and ready 
illustrations ; such are walking, talking, writing, 
playing the piano, using a tool, riding a bicycle, 
playing a game of skill, and the varied range of 
well-drilled proficiencies. It is but rarely that 
these descend to the level of blindly automatic 
actions, yet they are usually performed with dif- 
fuse, divided attention. Though their perform- 
ance involves a variable measure of cooperation 
of the highest centres, yet their functioning 
depends specifically upon the integrity of centres 
intermediate between those whose status is in 
the main physiological and those that demand 
the most constant directive and conscious control. 1 

1 In spite of our limited power to express psychological opera- 
tions in neurological terms, psychology is eager to profit by the 
general architectural principles of structure and use which neu- 
rology supplies. Mental operations are doubtless not explained 
or clarified when translated into somewhat hypothetical nervous 
equivalents ; but such interpretation is a useful reminder of the 
conditioning factors of mental states as of the variety of fluc- 
tuating conditions of body and environment, of experience and 
inheritance, that give meaning and practical value to psycholo- 
gical analyses. It is with this understanding that the reader is 
asked to accept such expressions as "brain-centres," "systems 
of neurones," " association tracts," as a convenient and justifiable 
mode of referring to the more definitely established findings of 
neurology. There is no other equally terse and concrete mode 



24 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

They fluctuate not only with the interest, ambi- 
tion, effort, importance that stimulates to their 
performance, but also with one's condition and 
" form." The optimum of one's executions com- 
monly demands the cooperation of the two. Of 
consciously directed work we find illustrations in 
all that type of orderly thought that requires our 
best endeavors and our most undisturbed atten- 
tion : design, invention, composition, reflection, 
coordination, interpretation, deduction, — these 
and related operations in the field of original in- 
tellectual research and construction represent the 
functions of the highest type of brain processes, 
and but rarely proceed to a profitable issue with- 
out a decided conscious intent, without the most 
developed form of deliberate awareness. 

It was set forth above that by nature and 
development human consciousness is a vastly use- 
ful endowment ; but its very complexity makes it 
inevitable that undesirable and disturbing forms 
of its activity should be prevalent. The ideal man 
might be said to have no forms of awareness but 
useful ones ; but so long as it is human to err, 
the exhibition of various failings in the manner 
of our consciousness will remain characteristic of 

of indicating the distribution of function within the complexity 
of our organized life ; and though the conception of a " centre " 
and of what it accomplishes must be kept sufficiently elastic 
to accommodate itself to the results of widening knowledge, it 
serves, even in its tentative form, a most helpful purpose. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 25 

our psychological make-up. So long as the man- 
ner and degree of the conscious direction of our 
actions may vary, it follows that such direction 
may be wisely or unwisely, helpfully or disturb- 
ingly applied. And, as usual, the deviations from 
the normal status, particularly under the influence 
of emotional susceptibility, offer the most ready 
illustrations of this sensitive equilibrium. The 
most common of these is the irrelevant inter- 
ference of the higher centre with the routine 
activity of the lower. A familiar instance is that 
of swallowing, in which the attempted direction 
of the process by a conscious effort is as likely as 
not to prevent its execution. Those who struggle 
repeatedly and often unsuccessfully to swallow 
a pill experience no trouble in swallowing their 
food. Here it would seem as though the mere 
presence of the higher dignity disturbs the natu- 
ral performance of a modest and lowly function, 
much as the presence of their elders will mar the 
spontaneity of the play of children. For it is true 
that, even where consciousness does not so decid- 
edly impede the desired result, it modifies and 
makes unnatural activities which, when performed 
unawares, are performed the best. Observe the 
late-comers at a concert or at church, walking 
down the aisle, with the eyes of the assemblage 
upon them, and decide how many of them walk 
naturally — which means subconsciously — under 



26 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

these circumstances. If we stop to express this 
relation in physiological terms, we fall back upon 
the plausible assumption of a constant flow of im- 
pulses from a higher directive to lower executive 
centres, the variable nature of which determines 
the tone or reactive tension of the centres imme- 
diately concerned in motor response. It is a very 
natural consequence of the normal and watchful 
service of these regulative influences that under 
many circumstances it should require a decided 
effort to withdraw their action, and thus permit 
an untrammeled, unsophisticated response of the 
motor organism. It is difficult to let the arm fall 
absolutely limp and yield the manipulation of its 
movements passively to another ; or to let one's 
self fall backward, though assured that we shall 
be safely caught ; or to relax when our excitement 
is not quite spent; or to walk confidently after 
slipping ; or to disregard the trembling hesitation 
experienced in crossing a narrow bridge which 
we know to be quite safe. And the difficulty, 
whether making itself consciously felt as fear or 
apprehension, or more vaguely as a sort of ner- 
vous instability (for there is always some con- 
scious and unpleasant realization of the disturbing 
feelings), may ^e plausibly regarded as expressive 
of some irregularity in the relations of tension 
between the higher and lower centres. Such irreg- 
ularities fall wholly within the normal range of 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 27 

fluctuation, though they contain explicit sugges- 
tions of the more extreme relations of the ab- 
normal. 

The most constant tranquilizer of such agita- 
tion is mental rest, which means the quiescence of 
the higher centres, through which the irregularity 
or extreme action of these tensions is allayed, 
and the normal relations of things reestablished. 
The calming effect of sleep, which may be assisted 
by a sedative dose, emphasizes the physiological 
nature of the difficulty. For it is the inability 
to throw off the " nervous " awareness of inner 
feelings that constitutes the insomnia, — a con- 
dition that may likewise make itself manifest 
in the twitching of muscles, the restless tapping 
of fingers or toes, or in the spasmodic start in 
falling asleep that once more arouses the nervous 
sleeper. The careful physician, as well as the ob- 
servant friend, notes a score of these subtle indi- 
cations of nervous disturbance, — noting also the 
efforts of the patient to conceal them, — that make 
their way through the channels of expression, 
partly involuntarily, partly subconsciously. They 
tell a story that may be read between the lines — 
half revealing and half concealing the thoughts 
that lie within — of worry, or apprehension, or 
strain, or excitement, or depression ; they tell such 
a story because of the delicate balance that exists 
between the centres that plan and feel and the 



28 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

centres that work and do, and by its transmuta- 
tion raises the variety of muscular contractions to 
the dignity and the complexity of human conduct. 
Such considerations facilitate the appreciation of 
the intricacy and the nicety of the laying of the 
groundwork, the warp and woof of the mental 
texture, and of the elaborate and variable patterns 
that are woven in the loom of the mind. They 
make it easier to understand why there should 
be difficulty in unraveling the threads, or inter- 
preting the design of the mental fabric, or why 
we must so frequently be content with an appre- 
ciation of no more than the general outlines and 
dominating composition. 

Resuming our illustrations, we note how, ac- 
cordingly, the quality of a performance will vary 
and take its tone from the mental conditions of its 
execution. Rivalry excites our latent powers and 
sharpens the edge of our endeavors ; yet the very 
presence of a considerable stake may act to upset 
the nicer poise of our exertions through over- 
anxiety. We can all recall from early or recent 
days how much easier it was to perform some newly 
acquired accomplishment when no one was looking, 
than when the moment of formal exhibition had 
arrived. There are relatively few players who do 
quite as well at tournaments and at the critical 
moments of play as upon less momentous occa- 
sions; and the anxiety of the performer makes 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 29 

itself felt, and complexly, in tlie report of his own 
consciousness. Over-guidance by the higher cen- 
tres thus cripples the efficiency of the work of the 
lower. The successful cooperation of both demands 
not only that the lower centres should be allowed 
to take fairly complete charge of as large a portion 
of the labor as they can efficiently direct, but that 
they should do so under a favorable oversight, 
not a "nervous," or intimidating, or vacillating, or 
too conscious one. The same holds in the process 
of acquisition of new facilities ; and it is in part 
because children and young people are burdened 
with less of this interfering directorship of con- 
sciousness that they learn many things more 
quickly and more skillfully than adults. The adult 
mind — at least all too commonly — cannot appar- 
ently be aware of an activity without a strong tend- 
ency to take the affair under its conscious wing, 
domineeringly to " boss the job." And so it may 
come to pass that we do successfully in unreflec- 
tive response to a natural stimulus what we fail to 
do when we strenuously try to succeed. 1 
To illustrate : — 

1 A similar relation may be observed in the budding of volun- 
tary control in infancy ; the child grasps reflexly what it cannot 
as yet grasp by intent ; and the diaries of the infant's growth 
must carefully distinguish the earlier reactions that appear in 
response to natural stimuli from the later ones, involving the use 
of the same muscles, that have become expressive of the execution 
of a desire. 



30 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

A young lady in learning to ride the bicycle 
had reached the stage of proficiency enabling her 
to ride quite steadily, but still with that intent 
set of the muscles that indicated a keen and alert 
inner watchfulness of every sensation and move- 
ment. Repeatedly she strove to guide the machine 
with but one hand on the handle-bar ; but as yet 
without success. When, however, her hair became 
disarranged, the left hand reached up quite un- 
concernedly and restored the escaping hairpin to 
its place ; and only then did it flash upon the 
rider that she was actually doing what she could 
not do, — which realization brought the hand 
back to its usual place quite precipitately to 
regain the disturbed equilibrium. 

The second illustration is personal : — 

I can readily adjust a certain kind of necktie, 
which I wear only occasionally, if I do not put 
my attention upon it, but let the hands follow 
out their ingrained habits ; if, however, I begin 
to reason which end goes over, and which under, 
and watch my movements in the mirror, a hope- 
less failure is the likely issue. 

" The centipede was happy quite, 
Until the toad for fun 

Said : ' Pray which leg comes after which ? ' 
This wrought his mind to such a pitch, 
He lay distracted in the ditch — 
Considering how to run." 

The interference of an over-conscious direction 
with the free performance of an ingrained activity 
may be examined at closer range. It is interesting 
to observe that there do occur mental states in 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 31 

which there is entire withdrawal of the normal 
consciousness, and that this results, so far as auto- 
matic activities go, in the most precise adjustment 
of means to end. The sleepwalker, because his 
highest conscious faculties are entirely cut of! 
from any participation in the process, walks fear- 
lessly along the edge of the parapet ; the hyp- 
notized subject will present this and many other 
accomplishments calling for a nicety of adjustment 
exceeding that of his normal command. It is 
because we hesitate that we are lost ; and it is 
the conscious anticipation of failure that takes off 
the nice edge of our weapons. Where the narrow 
mean lies between that realization of danger and 
difficulty that sharpens wit and avoids foolhardy 
risks and measures, and that over-attention to these 
that holds back the spur and checks the reins of 
free activity, there is no formula to inform us. 
The ignorance that is bliss is not always to be 
desired ; and the wisdom that is not folly is the 
wisdom of the trained judgment deciding appro- 
priately where consciously to direct and restrain, 
where to let the natural impulses take their own 
course. Yet, after all, this is as much a matter of 
temperament as of anything else ; likewise is it 
a matter of age and experience. The unconscious- 
ness of children, which the grown-up look upon 
with envy, results obviously from the simplicity 
of their personal and social consciousness that 



32 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

places slight restraint upon the free expression of 
their natural impulses. At a later stage, when 
comes the knowledge of good and evil, and quite 
as vitally of the conventionally sanctioned and 
tabooed, there is developed that painful shyness 
of early youth, when every movement, gesture, 
manner, utterance, and impulse is confused and 
shorn of its purpose in a paralyzing paroxysm of 
self-consciousness ; when, indeed, the native hue 
of easy resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale 
cast of thwarting hesitation. In no reaction is the 
effect of this false distribution of consciousness 
more manifest than in that delicate psycho-motor 
adjustment, speech. When this marvelously com- 
plex function is efficiently carried on, the highest 
centres make ready the words that express our 
thought, and the centres next lower in command 
direct the word-utterance. Every one is aware of 
the tendency, when fatigued or excited, to slips 
of the tongue, to hesitations, and slight mispro- 
nunciations. Apart from the habitual stutterer 
and stammerer, — the special victim of such ner- 
vousness, — there are many persons who only on 
occasions of embarrassment or unpleasant antici- 
pation cannot speak the words trippingly on the 
tongue ; while there are some persistent stutterers 
who, once well launched in a public address, with 
their manuscript before them, do not stutter at all. 
In singing, too, where the channel of utterance is 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 33 

a different one, and the direction of consciousness 
is toward tune and musical effect, stuttering is 
unknown. 

The limits of the utility of consciousness as a 
director of conduct seem thus fairly well defined. 
Considered broadly, the activities in which con- 
sciousness plays the largest part are those that 
give distinction to the intellectual life ; its reflec- 
tive, centralizing leadership permeates the vast and 
complex organization of psychic functions. Yet 
the greatest good of the whole requires equally 
that the control shall not be relaxed and the direc- 
tion of affairs left to the unvarying routine of 
undiscerning subordinates, and that the director 
shall not insist upon a participation in the work 
which others should be trained to do, or interfere 
with efficient service by an intimidating or dis- 
trustful oversight of the performance of his sub- 
ordinates. It is not advantageous to be a mere 
bundle of habits ; but it is a real advantage to 
have them and to use them. 



IV 

CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 

In the psychologist's analysis, the two central 
attitudes towards a given task thus appear as 
the manner of awareness which the planning and 
execution of the task bring with it, and again 
the degree of control that is exercised in its 
consummation. We have passed in review the 
distinctive varieties of such awareness and of its 
influence in shaping conduct ; we must now con- 
sider with like motive the status of such thought 
and behavior from the point of view of the direc- 
tive guidance of intent control. We begin by 
asking what relation is embodied in our nervous 
system between the conscious and the voluntary, 
including therein the relation of the more or less 
subconscious to the more or less involuntary. 
The central principle involved is that we can direct 
activity only in so far as we are sensible of its 
results, that all doing is guided by feeling ; that, 
for instance, we should not be able even to stand, 
had we not a constant influx of regulative sensa- 
tions in the contact of the feet with the floor and 
in the positions of limbs and muscles, that deter- 
mine the manner of maintaining our equilibrium. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 35 

It is because we have no sensation connected 
with the narrowing of the pupil in exposing the 
eye to light, that we are wholly unable to con- 
tract the pupil at will ; we do not even know how 
to set out to try to do it. That which is wholly 
unconscious is necessarily involuntary. The op- 
posite is, of course, not true ; actions that are 
involuntary — or, as we should be able to say, 
subvoluntary — may be, and indeed are likely to 
be accompanied by a more or less distinct aware- 
ness of their performance. That is, while we do 
not consciously initiate these groups of movements, 
but find them taking place in us in response to 
natural stimuli, yet in and at the close of their 
performance we have a fairly definite conscious- 
ness of the nature of the activity. Thus we ordi- 
narily wink involuntarily, but can wink at will; 
we ordinarily breathe involuntarily, but can take 
a deep breath or hold the breath; and this we 
can do because the winking and the breathing 
may be held up in consciousness, and the sensation 
thus experienced be made the starting-point of 
an impulse to repeat the action. Not that the per- 
formance is quite the same in the two cases ; the 
stage cough and the stage yawn and the stage 
laugh are as a rule distinguishable from those that 
result from a real irritation and a real drowsiness 
and a real mirth. What we observe is that the 
vestige left in consciousness by the performed 



36 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

action, though ordinarily performed without will- 
ing it, serves as the handle by which the will is 
enabled to take hold and reproduce the same 
action. It would thus seem to follow that no ac- 
tivity that leaves some trace of its performance 
behind it is strictly and wholly removed from the 
possible control of the will. Normally, the lim- 
its of such possibility, though not rigidly set, are 
yet fairly definitely established. Although we can 
recall with a moderate loss of vividness the sensa- 
tions accompanying blushing, we cannot blush at 
will ; yet there are some exceptional persons who 
can do this; and if for blushing we substitute 
the action of the tear glands, the proportion of 
those who can command the service of these soli- 
citors of sympathy in the absence of a proper 
exciting emotion would be appreciably increased. 
But in extreme and abnormal organizations these 
limits will be still farther removed towards the 
apparently involuntary, embracing in the annals 
of hypnotism records that severely tax belief. Yet 
the normal remoteness from voluntary control of 
these responses to organic stimuli is recognized as 
a trait of our nervous endowment, as is also the 
measure of sensational and emotional awareness 
which follows in their wake. 1 

1 It is perhaps worthy of note that such a primitive reflex as 
sneezing requires its genuine stimulus, and has likewise do emo- 
tional status. What the actor imitates are rather the by-products 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 37 

It may be well to recall another type of subcon- 
scious habit that illustrates somewhat differently 
this relation of the partially-felt to the partially- 
willed. Almost every one has certain tricks of 
manner of which he is anxious to break himself. 
Assuming that he makes an honest effort to do 
so, a part of the difficulty lies in the fact that 
the habit is growing by frequent use, without 
offering a fair chance at its correction, because 
one remains so nearly unaware of the lapses as 
they occur. We bring ourselves up with a sharp 
turn every now and then, to find that we have 
been wrinkling the forehead, or holding ourselves 
stoop-shouldered, or putting the hands in the 
pockets, or biting the finger-nails, or toying with 
a watch-chain or bunch of keys, or doing this, 
that, or the other, in spite of our repeated resolu- 
tions not to lapse into these habits. The first step 
in the correction of such habits is to form the 
habit of becoming conscious of the habit ; and 
in that our friends frequently offer a reminding 
assistance. This, then, is the complementary type 

of the sneeze than the intrinsic reflex itself. To have the pupil 
contract, we must turn the eyes to the light, and likewise may we 
deliberately gaze towards the sun to excite (by some peculiar trick 
of our nervous system) the irritation that seeks relief in a sneeze. 
Yet the latter reveals its closer affinity to reflexes that have a 
tinge of control, in that we can voluntarily cooperate to check or 
to facilitate the reaction, which we cannot do in the case of the 
contracting pupil. 



38 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

of action which has become so entirely involun- 
tary that its performance is all but lost to con- 
sciousness. 

The slight participation of consciousness in the 
routine of habit appears also in the inability to 
recall the nature of habits to which our subcon- 
scious selves are really subject. Most of us have 
quite fixed habits as to which stocking we put on 
first, which arm goes first into its sleeve, which 
thumb we put above and which below in clasping 
the hands together, which foot we place on the 
first tread in starting to go upstairs, which lap of 
the collar goes over and which under, what are 
the positions of the fingers in buttoning a button, 
what is the sequence of movements in brushing 
the teeth, how we extinguish a match, and so on ; 
and yet we cannot tell, when the question is 
sprung upon us, what is our habit. When we try 
to recall how we do these various things, we aim 
to recall, or even actually to rehearse, the several 
feelings and positions of the hands or arms or 
legs in the occupations referred to, with the at- 
tention directed — an unusual attitude — to the 
details of the habit. The habit seems to reside 
in the fingers, — really, of course, in the nerve- 
centres that guide the fingers, — so that the pre- 
sentation to them of the accustomed stimuli at 
once produces the accustomed reaction. In this 
way we subconsciously observe and remember and 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 39 

respond to a host of things. We know for the 
various doors of our house where to reach for the 
knob, whether high or low, to the left or right, to 
turn the knob or raise the latch, to pull or push, 
vigorously or gently. By the same token the 
knitter's hands feel for her the proper stimuli to 
keep the needles flying. These guiding sensations 
are necessary to the cerebral direction of the per- 
formance ; and if they were to disappear, the 
knitting would cease. They serve as the connect- 
ing bond between the actually subconscious and 
the potentially conscious. Note, however, that 
should the subconscious habit fail for any reason, 
then consciousness becomes aroused. If the knit- 
ter should drop a stitch, she is likely to become 
aware of it and to assume a conscious attitude for 
a time towards her occupation. Similarly, if the 
door-knob had been shifted since your last visit, 
you would be apt to notice something unusual in 
the arrangement ; and if you happen to put the 
wrong foot first into the stocking or the unusual 
arm first into the sleeve, you feel that the opera- 
tion is awkward. The long persistence, in spite of 
disuse, of such subconscious associations is indeed 
remarkable, and appears in such instances as that 
recorded by Miss Cobbe, who, on sitting down 
to write in a room where eight years before she 
had been accustomed to read and study, became 
aware that her feet were moving restlessly under 



40 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the table ; she was then able to recall that she had 
always used a footstool at this table, and it was 
this the feet were seeking. Professor Miinsterberg 
has subjected such tendencies to an experimental 
test. Having the habit of dipping his pen into 
an inkstand on the left side of his desk, he placed 
a second and exactly similar inkstand also on the 
right side ; and after becoming thoroughly accus- 
tomed to the sight of the two, and when the dip- 
ping of the pen had become as mechanical as ever, 
he kept the inkwell on the right side filled and 
that on the left empty, and counted how often 
he caught himself dipping or starting to dip the 
pen into the unfilled inkstand. When the new 
habit was formed, the arrangement was again 
changed. The falling away of the discarded im- 
pulse goes on quite rapidly, decreasing in the first 
transfer of position from twenty-five false move- 
ments on the first day to practically no errors at 
the end of a week. Whether the false movement 
was carried to completion and the pen actually 
dipped into the empty inkwell, or whether the 
hand approached the wrong side and checked it- 
self en route, seemed to depend upon the degree 
of concentration which at that moment the writ- 
ing demanded. Similar results were obtained by 
changing the pocket in which the watch was car- 
ried, or by locking the door of the room that was 
usually used for exit and forming the habit of 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 41 

going out through another door. It would thus 
appear that habits may be in part rescued from the 
subconscious, consciously trained, and readopted 
by the subconscious self ; and the evidence sug- 
gests that the subconscious paths of sensory and 
motor association are formed under much the same 
influences as condition those of conscious acqui- 
sition. We all have the opportunity of corrobo- 
rating these results in observing how strongly or 
how little we persist in writing the old year date 
after each first of January ; yet in a short time 
the new habit is in command and the old one dis- 
missed. 

Clearly, then, the fertile field for the illustra- 
tion of such subconscious operations is that large 
intermediate one between those simple bodily 
functions acquired in the earliest period of life, 
and those most difficult and variable occupations 
that to the end demand our careful and painstak- 
ing attention, — that is, the field of well-drilled 
habits, of semi-automatic groups of movement, of 
the customary common activities that make up the 
great mass of the familiar but intelligent routine. 
And first, the varying participation of conscious- 
ness in the successive stages of acquisition attracts 
notice. The principle involved is easily formu- 
lated. At the outset each step of the performance 
is separately and distinctly the object of attention 
and effort ; and as practice proceeds and expert- 



42 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ness is gained, the attention is suitably apportioned 
over the whole of the group o£ processes, the 
separate portions thereof becoming fused into 
larger units, which in turn make a constantly 
diminishing demand upon consciousness. 1 

Walking, talking, writing, dressing, drawing, 
sewing, using a typewriter, playing upon a piano or 
violin, riding a bicycle, handling a tool, a tennis 
racquet, or a golf club — may all serve as illustra- 
tions of the path of progress of such acquisitions, 
involving various and variously complex coordina- 
tions of mental, sensory, and motor factors. In 
each case the several parts of the acquisition 
must be repeatedly introduced to consciousness 
and held in the focus of attention, until both 
senses and muscles appreciate their respective 
tasks. It will also not escape observation that as 

1 This fusion of the several portions of a task into a unified 
action is a most essential part of the acquisition. So long as 
each process is undertaken as a separate tax upon the memory, 
the attention is divided, say, between what the right hand and what 
the left is doing ; when the two are fused, there is a single but 
more complex feeling of a common activity of a right-and-left- 
hand type. A deliberate attempt to secure this single unit-feeling 
in connection with acquiring complex functions is of aid. It is, 
for instance, easy and natural to swing the arm and leg in a circle 
in the same direction ; but to swing the leg clockwise, and the 
arm (of the same side) counter-clockwise is difficult, as that runs 
counter to the acquired trend of coordination of arm and leg. It 
is an aid in such acquisition to get the conscious feeling of inner- 
vation and movement of the two as inspired and comprehended 
in a common impulse. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 43 

the habit or accomplishment is acquired, the effort 
involved diminishes, the skill — that is, the nicety 
of adjustment of impulse to the desired achieve- 
ment, and the avoidance of unnecessary or round- 
about exertion — increases, and facility becomes 
an expression of the decreasing demand upon a 
directive attention. We can then do things well 
not only without half attending, but also without 
half trying. 

If you desire a first-hand experience with these 
relations, it may be gained objectively by observ- 
ing a child at its first lessons on the piano, or by 
watching your own progress in learning to use the 
typewriter. The several acts in the drama of such 
acquisition will show, first, the deliberate finding 
of each note or letter on the page, and then a 
change of attention to the corresponding key on 
the keyboard ; then a somewhat greater facility at 
each of these steps, and a gradually established 
ability to spread the attention more nearly equit- 
ably over page and hands ; then the acquisition 
of more complex coordinations, or sequences, the 
simpler ones now going of themselves and the 
main attention focused upon the less familiar and 
more intricate adjustments, while the conscious- 
ness begins to take in larger and larger units, each 
requiring only a single initial impulse ; until at 
length eyes and fingers seem to guide themselves, 
and the attention may be directed partly to extra- 



44 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

neous matters, while the performance proceeds 
undisturbed. At that stage such a description as 
the following becomes apposite : — 

" Two different lines of hieroglyphics have to 
be read at once, and the right hand has to be 
guided to attend to one of them, the left to an- 
other. All the ten fingers have the work assigned 
as quickly as they can move. The mind, or some- 
thing which does duty as mind, interprets scores 
of A sharps and B flats and C naturals into black 
ivory keys and white ones, crotchets and quavers 
and demi-semiquavers, rests, and all the mysteries 
of music. The feet are not idle, but have some- 
thing to do with the pedals. . . . And all this 
time the performer, the conscious performer, is in 
a seventh heaven of artistic rapture at the results 
of all this tremendous business, or perchance lost 
in a flirtation with the individual who turns the 
leaves of the music-book, and is justly persuaded 
she is giving him the whole of her soul." — Miss 
Cobbe. 

Still more remarkable, as showing the extent to 
which such distribution of consciousness may be 
carried in regard to two complicated and wholly 
unrelated tasks, is the classic instance of Houdin, 
the French prestidigitateur. In order to quicken 
his senses and increase his manual skill, he prac- 
ticed juggling with balls ; and " having after a 
month's practice become thorough master of the 
art of keeping up four balls at once, he placed a 
book before him, and, while the balls were in the 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 45 

air, accustomed himself to read without hesita- 
tion." And, as evidence of the tenacity of such 
acquisitions, he relates that after thirty years, 
with practically no intervening practice, he found 
himself able to read while keeping three balls 
going. 

Returning to the more ordinary habit-acquisi- 
tions, we have further to note that when, after 
a variable period of training, they reach a sub- 
conscious (and subvoluntary) stage, they require 
merely the initial start, or the familiar succes- 
sion of slight stimuli, to run themselves off the 
reel. The most convincing illustrations of such 
automatic execution are those in which the 
higher centres are thrown hors de combat, and yet 
the actions go on as well as usual. The somnam- 
bulist directs his steps accurately ; the somnilo- 
quist utters words and sentences ; more rarely — 
because writing does not become as automatic as 
walking or talking — persons have been known 
to get up and write in their sleep. But every 
one may observe the same type of automatism ; it 
occurs in the experience, when engaged in a pro- 
tracted copying from a book, of suddenly arous- 
ing one's self from a state of distracted inat- 
tention, during which, however, the writing has 
been going on as accurately as usual, yet without 
appreciation of the sense or even of the appear- 
ance of the text. Such is subconscious copying. 



46 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

Another parallel experience is that of initiating a 
process that has one habitual set of sequences, but 
one that may be performed without the inten- 
tion of proceeding to the others, and then finding 
that the whole of the routine performance has 
taken place while one has been vaguely conscious 
and not at all desirous of the result. The aver- 
age man will find himself winding his watch — 
a task usually reserved for the retiring hour — 
while changing his waistcoat in dressing; and the 
unusual man may actually find himself in bed 
before realizing that it was his intention to dress 
for dinner, — and that, merely because the watch- 
winding reaction set off the whole train of auto- 
matic movements associated with the nocturnal 
performance of that process ; and did so without 
intruding itself upon the otherwise occupied at- 
tention. Such is subconscious undressing. 

The common underlying condition of these 
automatic, subvoluntary activities is a shunting 
out of gear of the ordinary forms of wakeful alert- 
ness, or briefly, a state of distraction. Not that 
the distraction need be very marked ; it merely 
requires that one set of activities shall be in the 
direct field of attention while another and more 
automatic group lies in the indirect field. It is 
because these automatic, routine performances do 
not require, and accordingly do not receive, any 
large share of attention that it becomes possible 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 47 

to bestow the better half of one's consciousness 
upon one task and distractedly attend to the other. 
In eating we naturally and purposely devote but 
an occasional and indirect type of attention to 
the food and its manipulations. The social embel- 
lishment of dining as a function is an outgrowth 
of the sentiment that paves the way for the sub- 
conscious attitude towards the material side of 
the repast. I could cite the case of a well-known 
philosopher, whose wife found it necessary to 
inform him when he had had his three cups of 
tea, — his rigid limit. I could mention the name 
of a physiologist, equally well known, who, on one 
occasion at least, went to bed thinking that he 
had dined, when really he had not. We are all 
acquainted with persons who mechanically eat 
what is set before them, continuing so long as the 
food on the plate suggests the repetition of the 
knif e-and-fork reaction, and who are quite unable 
to give an account of what or how much they have 
eaten. What is to be noted in these composite 
instances is not mainly the absence of dependable 
subjective sensations that may serve as hooks for 
the memory to attach itself, but the normal sub- 
conscious execution of habitual activities, the ini- 
tiative and the completion of which alike leave 
so slight a trace in the memory that we cannot 
say whether we have performed them or not. A 
typical instance is that of mislaying an object in 



48 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

habitual use. Very probably the lost article was 
handled in such a condition of minor distraction. 
You try to recall when and where you last saw 
it or used it ; its normal place is on the study 
table. Was it there last evening when you put 
out the lights ? You cannot say. Frequently you 
are confident that it was, when unimpeachable cir- 
cumstantial evidence proves your confidence mis- 
placed. Your automatic habits have set off a train 
of movements without informing your conscious- 
ness of the fact. In taking off eyeglasses or 
rings, preparatory to washing face and hands, one 
may have inconveniently failed to have formed 
any definite habit of bestowing them in a constant 
place ; and in that event one's conscious self will 
have frequent occasion to follow the trail of the 
subconscious in a desperate search to recover the 
transient resting-place of these articles. Thus 
does the subconscious prepare the way for illu- 
sions of memory and cast suspicion upon the most 
confident verdict of our conscious selves. Actions 
may be omitted that we had intended to do, 
and ordinarily would have habitually done, and 
consciousness remains unaware of their omission ; 
actions may be performed and consciousness take 
no part in their initiative, even remaining igno- 
rant of their performance when completed. With- 
out being in any way abnormal, we do many 
things, and indicate that we see, hear, or feel 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOLITION 49 

things, and yet are we so subconscious of these 
incidents that, so far as we rely upon the testi- 
mony of memory under the searching examination 
of our attentive consciousness, we should unre- 
servedly deny that these experiences and these 
doings were indeed ours. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 

This range of illustrations sets forth that in 
respect to the apportionment of conscious atten- 
tion all states are more or less concentrated and 
more or less diffused ; upon the mental stage the 
light is focused more strongly upon one part of 
the setting and illuminates another but dimly and 
uncertainly. The field of consciousness is always 
more or less contracted ; and not alone in the 
centre near the footlights, but farther back where 
the " asides " are spoken, do significant incidents 
occur. The concentration of the high lights upon 
one area intensifies the dusk of the rest of the 
stage ; and profound concentration paves the way 
for pronounced distraction. With many persons 
such intent absorption in one occupation and 
absent-mindedness to all other, and particularly to 
the commonplace affairs of life, is temperamental ; 
and the fully ripened fruit of such tendencies may 
be sampled by shaking the tree of traditional tales 
of absent-mindedness. These illustrate the degree 
to which abstraction may obscure the background 
of consciousness and tolerate the performance of 
irrelevant reactions without arousing the correc- 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 51 

tive interference of the central consciousness, and 
have for the most part been recorded for the 
interest or amusement inherent in their recital. 
They are well worthy of a more specific considera- 
tion with reference to the psychological principles 
which they illustrate ; and with this end, a survey 
of such lapses of consciousness will occupy one of 
the succeeding sections. For the present it will be 
sufficient to appreciate the status of absent-mind- 
edness in terms of the fluctuation of the attention, 
of which it is an incidental product and symbol. 

Absent-mindedness, in conformity with the gen- 
eral scheme of subconscious activities, will bring 
about a sensory inattentiveness to a portion of 
the possible field : and so, impressions that would 
ordinarily easily penetrate into the conscious area 
sufficiently to be responded to, remain unper- 
ceived ; and again, actions are performed, and yet 
render no account of themselves to consciousness, 
or are mistakenly performed without awareness 
of the confusion. The contraction of the sen- 
sory field is a frequent type. Every student has 
become so absorbed in his work as to have missed 
the sound of the dinner bell or some equally imper- 
ative summons ; the traveler becomes lost in the 
latest novel and rides by his station; the foot- 
ball player, in the intense interest in the game, 
does not feel the bumps and bruises ; and from 
Archimedes of old, absorbed in his mathemati- 



52 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

cal problems during the taking of Syracuse, to 
Hegel's completion of a metaphysical treatise on 
the day of the battle of Jena, or to the modern 
physiologist who forgets a violent toothache dur- 
ing the period of his lecture, we have the same 
illustrations of the intense focusing on a narrow 
area, shutting out from consciousness impressions 
that would ordinarily readily gain admittance. 
The difficulty of posting letters, or attending to 
the commissions that are intrusted to us, when 
once we become absorbed in the day's occupa- 
tions, shows how readily what, at one moment, 
is carefully fixed upon the charge of the atten- 
tion, becomes lost in the background when other 
urgent claimants displace it. The mechanical per- 
formance of a task that leaves no record of its 
execution because at the time the attention is 
largely elsewhere, transfers the same relation to 
the motor field; and the typical confusions of 
unrelated activities, and the innocent and inad- 
vertent disregard of conventionalities, make up 
the rest of the catalogue of the traits of absent- 
mindedness, all of them variously illustrative of 
the subconscious direction of conduct. Naturally 
these several factors do not remain unrelated, but 
combine to compose the more extreme instances 
of distraction, which likewise involve so pronounced 
and temperamental a degree of absorption as to 
place them in a quasi-abnormal class. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 53 

The transient narrowing of the field of con- 
sciousness conditioned by a dominant absorbing 
occupation may be outwardly directed, — as oc- 
curs when, in the fascination of a play or a street- 
pageant, the pickpocket finds favorable occasion 
to ply his trade without arousing suspicion, — or 
more typically inwardly, when occupied with one's 
own thoughts. Such contraction of the attention 
by no means presents a single or simple state. 
The absorbed student, if of such disposition, may 
become blind, deaf, and insensitive to all but 
his central occupation ; on the other hand, one 
anxiously awaiting a given appearance — such is 
the convinced witness of the materializations of 
the spiritualistic seance — may project his fancies 
objectively, or misconstrue what is actually pre- 
sent to the resemblance of his inner anticipation, 
while consistently unobservant of all that might 
antagonize or discredit his prejudiced expectation. 
Or again, one may be fatigued, sleepy, preoccu- 
pied, apathetic, and so react to his environment 
with less alertness, — as though the general illu- 
mination of the mental field were dimmer than 
usual. Still further, the very fact that one is 
aiming to distribute his energies over too large 
a field, or that their exercise is accompanied by 
unusual excitement, may necessitate a neglect of 
some parts thereof, which with less strenuous at- 
tention would have received adequate notice. The 



54 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

absent-minded type of maladjustment may be 
connected with each of these conditions and their 
several varieties, but commonly requires that some 
factor of the whole falls short of, without being 
wholly deprived of its share of normal awareness 
and control ; it exhibits the result of such neglect 
in a lapse or failing, trivial, it may be, but signi- 
ficant. The frequency and familiarity of such 
lapses make them the best known illustrations of 
what happens when the normal distribution of the 
attention is slightly or appreciably diverged from, 
and intrusions from the dim subconscious areas 
enter, at times to make, not infrequently to mar, 
the even tenor of our mental ways. 

Let me then suggest by partly fictitious, yet 
realistically derived instances the range of such 
absent-minded doings corroborative of the status 
just assigned to them. 

There is the unintentional, and, for a time, un- 
aware winding of your watch in changing your 
waistcoat ; or the surprise, when in proper course 
of events you proceed to wind your watch, to find 
it already wound by your otherwise occupied self ; 
or the distracted taking up of a silver dollar or 
a pill-box and trying to perform the watch-wind- 
ing reaction upon it ; or the casual handling of 
the watch with the intent to wind it, but owing to 
other solicitations of your attention, the putting 
it aside with a feeling that it has been wound when 
it has not ; or, in handling your watch simultane- 
ously with your purse, the placing of the purse 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 55 

under the pillow and of the watch in the bureau- 
drawer ; or, momentarily oblivious that your own 
stem-winding watch is at the jeweler's, and that the 
one that he has loaned you in its place winds with 
a key, the attempt to wind it by the stem, perhaps 
with an instant's suspicion that the mainspring has 
broken ; or, your own being an open-faced watch 
and the substitute one with a closed case, the 
discovery of yourself staring at the outer case 
trying to puzzle out the time ; or, though for the 
past months or years you have been placing your 
watch under the pillow, the sporadic reassertion of 
the still older but discarded habit of hanging it 
in your waistcoat pocket over a chair ; or, when 
asked the time just after consulting your time- 
piece, the inability to tell, though your glimpse 
of the watch-face satisfied your own curiosity ; or, 
in dressing in the morning, with your thoughts 
far afield, the appropriation of your room-mate's 
watch instead of your own ; or, your eye caught 
by the sight of his, the attempt to wear his in 
addition to your own ; or the abstracted search for 
your watch while holding it in your hand ; or, 
on a day of special excitement or hurry, the going 
off without your watch ; or, to cap the series, 
the sudden suspicion that you have forgotten it, 
followed by an anxious exploration of all your 
pockets, the failure to detect it, and yet, a mo- 
ment later, the consultation thereof to see whether 
you have time to go back and get it. 

Throughout these tableaux of distracted poses, 
the mental status can be only partially, sometimes 
hardly at all gauged by the nature of the slip or 



56 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

maladjustment, but requires to be interpreted in 
reference to the scattered or concentrated phase 
of attention to which the lapse was due. The 
subjective account in terms of disposition, habit, 
experience, condition, outward and inward occu- 
pation, intention, and awareness, is needed to give 
the local color to the outline sketch; when that 
is done, the incident stands as a picture, telling 
its own story; and the story thus told takes its 
place in the chapters that recount the standard 
relations between awareness and action, between 
awareness and the perception of a situation, be- 
tween awareness and the interpretation that 
intervenes to give meaning to the action of the 
performers. Whether these incidents give rise to 
little comedies of errors, or exhibit the successful 
staging of the scenes under the clever management 
of the subconscious understudies, they show with 
equal aptness how the fluctuating distribution of 
parts by the directing attention modifies the effect 
of the plot and movement of the psychological 
drama. 

Turning our attention to the concentrated atti- 
tudes of voluntary attention, we may first contrast 
them with the diffuse state of the versatile pianist 
who plays and yet takes part in the conversa- 
tion ; or of the hostess observing the progress of 
her dinner, that this guest is being amused and 
another bored, what she is saying to her neigh- 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 57 

bor and what he is saying to her, and between her 
words an occasional nod to a servant or a studied 
glance of another's costume, together with the 
diverse undercurrents of things to be remembered 
and attended to in due sequence, as the evening 
advances. The highest use of our powers, the 
nicest adjustment of our skill, requires the undis- 
turbed concentration of attention upon one single 
task. A billiard player or a chess player, a whist 
player or a tennis player, is apt to fall off in the 
skill of his play, if he talks or attends to other 
trifles even during the breathing-spells between 
moments of action. We can keep ourselves occu- 
pied with routine business by the hour and easily 
pass from one thing to another, and at the end not 
feel particularly fatigued. But careful thought 
requiring complex correlations of facts and prin- 
ciples, original work that depends upon seeing 
unusual relations truly and clearly, — these demand 
absolute freedom from disturbance or distraction. 
It is then that we shut ourselves up in a room and 
require long periods of close absorption, far from 
the madding crowd of other solicitations. It is 
interesting to observe that in such cases, even the 
automatic movements that demand but little atten- 
tion are apt to fall away. It is when he becomes 
particularly absorbed that the writer lets his pipe 
go out ; it is when they come to a particularly 
exciting part of their discourse that two compan- 



58 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ions, talking as they stroll, stop, apparently unable 
to talk and walk at the same time. The typical 
attitude of close attention is one of inhibited 
motion, — the rigid posture of limbs, the set stare 
of the eye, the holding of the breath, the dimi- 
nution of all function, however involuntary, to a 
minimum. That such intense states of concentra- 
tion cannot be maintained for long periods with- 
out inducing excessive fatigue, we know very well ; 
and likewise, that it is just this element of concen- 
tration that distinguishes our lighter from our more 
intense occupations, and in the end makes the 
important difference between work and play and 
mere occupation for the sake of being occupied. 

For the comprehension of the more independ- 
ent manifestations of subconscious activity, the 
appreciation of the variations in concentration 
and diffusion of ordinary states of the attention 
is directly significant. The normal average sta- 
tus represents a rather wide range of alertness, in 
which many different and unrelated applicants for 
attention have all a fair chance to gain a hearing ; 
as a rule, our minds are moderately occupied and 
moderately vacant, neither wholly absorbed nor 
wholly free. At the breakfast-table a glance at 
the headlines of the newspaper, the opening of an 
egg, the answer to a question, the overhearing of 
the conversation of others, appreciation of the 
hour and the possible need for haste, the disap- 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 59 

pointment that the sky is again threatening, — all 
receive their share of attention easily, without 
serious disturbance to the others. After hours of 
mental labor, we seek recreation in a walk, yield- 
ing gladly to the diverse and non-strenuous invi- 
tations to our attention offered by the roadside 
and the life of nature ; or for more protracted re- 
cuperation from overwork, we embrace or resign 
ourselves to the life of a week at sea, enjoying its 
monotony, its lack of appeal to our wearied atten- 
tion, and filling the gaps of our accustomed busi- 
ness with much eating and sleeping, with the small 
talk of new acquaintances, or a dilettante interest 
in things nautical. To many the very absence of 
the usual activities of the attention proves wear- 
ing, and the type of conscious experience which 
we call ennui or boredom sets in. To relieve it, 
we make occasions of interest out of trifles ; and 
the passing of a steamer, the play of a school of 
porpoises, creates quite a flurry of excitement in 
the unoccupied and eager waste of the attention. 
The very attention to the absence of interesting 
occupation increases the sense of weariness, and 
expands the hour of waiting at a desolate railway 
station into a seemingly interminable period ; and 
we are as familiarly acquainted with the rapid 
passage of time when we are thoroughly engrossed 
in our task. Thus between the states of sharpest 
concentration — like the brilliant circle of the sun 



60 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

setting amid dark clouds — and the most evenly 
dispersed attention — like the noon-light of an 
overcast sky — there are all shades and grades of 
distribution, all manners and variations in the 
chiaroscuro of the mental illumination. In regard 
to automatic activities, the special principle to be 
emphasized is that the field of the subconscious is 
the darkened area that comes with the high lights ; 
these furnish the conditions for its most charac- 
teristic manifestations, while the diffuse illumina- 
tion of the ordinary widely alert attentive states 
offers the least favorable conditions for its unob- 
served entrance upon the field. Thus noting neg- 
atively the character of the conditions unfavorable 
to subconscious activity, — the general mental 
alertness in which orientation and adaptation to 
the mildly complex and variable environment take 
place easily and naturally, in which the atten- 
tion is ready to shift towards any newcomer, — 
we shall for the most part be considering the 
concentrated forms of attention from normal to 
abnormal, in the margins of which the subcon- 
scious disports itself, but partly known or wholly 
unknown to the occupants of the focal field. 

A pertinent test of the degree of concentration 
is the sensitiveness to disturbance. We are readily 
aroused from mildly absorbing occupations, and 
do not resent the interruption so seriously ; on 
the other hand, it may require a more repeated or 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 61 

more urgent demand to arouse us from a more 
intense occupation, though when once a disturb- 
ance breaks in upon an exacting task, it is the 
more likely to sidetrack the train of ideas. The 
alighting of a fly, remarks Pascal, will disturb the 
most profound thoughts of genius. Allied to this 
is the psychology of the practice indulged in to 
upset the poise of the performer, which in youth- 
ful parlance is known as " rattling." The practice 
rests upon the known difficulty of accomplishing 
one's best during distraction, and the consequent 
supplying of the distraction by the enthusiastic 
opposition. And yet it is just at this point that 
the temperamental or individual factor in the 
equation assumes its greatest value. The suscep- 
tibility to disturbance is as variable a factor as 
any in the psychology of our individual differ- 
ences ; and what disturbs one leaves another un- 
touched. But more especially do we differ in that 

A. performs almost everything that he undertakes 
with a degree of concentration that easily shuts 
out the outer world ; while B. is always moderately 
alert, always close to the call of any sudden appeal 
to the attention. A. sits down at the camp stove, 
with a novel in one hand, and is to stir with the 
other the contents of the pot ; after due lapse of 
time the novel is read, but the stew is burned ; to 

B. this would have been a highly improbable inci- 
dent. He who does a few absent-minded things is 



62 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

apt to do many of them, to fall naturally into the 
lost-in-thought attitude of inner contemplation ; 
for distraitness is his mental habit. The impor- 
tance of this relation will appear in the sequel, 
and prepares us to find that the more extreme and 
abnormal manifestations of the subconscious will 
depend more intrinsically upon the operation of a 
favorable temperament than upon any objective 
inducement, such as an engrossing occupation. 
Unusual activities of the subconscious will, in the 
main, occur only in unusual mental constitutions ; 
normally, the emergence of a fairly independent 
piece of subconscious functioning depends upon 
a moderate variation from the standard illumina- 
tion of conscious attention, — just the darkening 
of a passing cloud ; abnormally, in favorable cases, 
the measure of its independence is decidedly em- 
phasized and its more notable and impressive 
performances made possible. Yet throughout, 
the phenomena present consistent relations; the 
several factors that determine the result vary 
constantly and puzzlingly, and none more so than 
the individual temperament, the dominant integer 
in the personal equation. 1 

1 In this respect the mental states of children are interesting. 
Children enter into their occupations with a decided intentness 
and an emotional vivacity that bury them deep in the reality of 
their play ; and they are likewise free from any considerable 
range of acknowledged claims to their attention. They accordingly 
furnish favorable opportunities for subconscious activity. At the 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF ATTENTION 63 

same time the relative feebleness of their attention and the weak- 
ness of their habits militate against any very promising field for 
the exhibition of such subconscious traits. In actual observation 
the effect of both these tendencies may be readily observed. Chil- 
dren, if undisturbed, become absorbed in play and are most oblivi- 
ous of what is going on about them, giving themselves singly and 
intensely to their play-fancies, forgetting their troubles, and occa- 
sionally falling into amusing lapses that exhibit the subconscious 
activities in formation. On the other hand, they weary quickly, 
require constant change of occupation, and welcome distraction if 
it be offered. 



VI 

THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

At this juncture it becomes necessary to turn 
back for a nearer view of the relations that ob- 
tain among the distinctive types of consciousness. 
The inward awareness, which we readily distin- 
guished from that determined by the solicitors 
of our attention in the outer world of objective 
things and happenings, was observed to include, 
within the field of its operations, the various sen- 
sations that arise from the obscure organic func- 
tions that go on within the body. It is only for 
formal purposes that we classify with these that 
other type of inward awareness by means of which 
we enter the world of mind. This is an awareness 
of our own memory-images, perceptions of rela- 
tion, comparisons, thoughts, ideas, inferences, 
imaginings ; and again of our impulses, struggles, 
desires, resolves ; and still further, mingled with 
all these and giving color to the whole, of our 
longings, interests, hopes, fears, ambitions, aver- 
sions, likes, virtues, and shortcomings. This form 
of awareness — that pervades the busy forum 
of the inner life — itself becomes the introspec- 
tive equipment of greatest service to the psycho- 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 65 

logist in the pursuit of his science ; and these 
several terms receive their significance and yield 
to analysis in so far as our introspection enables 
us to discover their nature and relations. And fur- 
ther, as will be considered in due course, there 
results from all this elaborate internal life, and is 
complexly organized upon the basis of all these 
forms of awareness, a consciousness sui generis, 
a consciousness of self, of a personal ego in its 
relations to its own past and to the object-world 
with which it holds commerce, and in its social 
responses to similar consciousness in other selves. 
Our immediate concern lies with the service that 
subconscious processes perform in the flow of 
logically associated ideas, in all the several com- 
plex activities incident to connected, more or less 
reflective thinking. 

In considering at close range the apportion- 
ment of the affairs of the mental life to the 
subconscious and the conscious participants, it 
becomes clear that some sort of selective process 
goes on, implying naturally that there is at com- 
mand a collection of material from among which 
the selection is made. How far is the selection 
and the accumulation of material conscious, how 
far the result of processes lying so far below the 
surface that introspection fails to reveal them? 
Ordinarily I take cognizance of such of my sur- 
roundings as hold my interest or require my 



66 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

attention ; but I do not observe a minute fraction 
of the total range of possible applicants for my 
regard. Clearly, in purposeful occupation, atten- 
tion is no mere idle inquisitiveness, skipping from 
one thing to another, but a moderately consist- 
ent, regulated force. It is commonly maintained, 
and for our present purposes with sufficient accu- 
racy, that the underlying interest determines what 
we observe and what we neglect. The nurse, 
awakening to the slightest sign of restlessness in 
her patient, but sleeping quietly through other 
noises, is a ready example of the fact that even in 
sleep the selective action of attention goes on. It 
goes on as well negatively as positively, excluding 
and admitting impressions upon the same fairly 
consistent principle. When we read for pleasure 
we are not likely to notice misprints ; when we 
read proof we fail as a rule to appreciate the full 
literary value of the text. I concentrate my 
thoughts by deliberately shutting out of my con- 
sciousness whole areas of possible experience ; yet 
whether or not I succeed at a desired moment 
in so concentrating my attention depends upon 
rather complex circumstances, the most signifi- 
cant of which will in due course be set forth. 

What is particularly pertinent at present is that 
some consent, some inclination of the attention 
toward the admission of the candidate for notice, 
is the usual condition of his acceptance. Such 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 67 

inclination is not wholly within our own determi- 
nation, though more so in the field of sensation 
than in that of reflection. Admittedly we do not 
wholly control what we shall see, nor what we shall 
think; yet the factor of consenting inclination 
is present and characteristic in a large range of 
normal applications of the attention. Unusually 
violent claimants for notice break through my 
absorption, and do so against my explicit desires 
and resolution ; though frequently, intruders are 
in turn as promptly ejected as admitted. And 
changing with the hour and the mood, my mind 
at times drifts restlessly to every fresh solicita- 
tion, and will not bend to serious work, where de- 
sire lies ; while again under other skies I am able 
to be conveniently not at home to all applicants 
that attempt to intrude upon my busy privacy. 
So also does use determine in some measure the 
range of attention. The resident of the city fails 
to hear the noises that disturb the rural visitor ; 
and the quiet of the country, or the unaccustomed 
murmurings of field or woods or seashore, disturb 
the sleep of the city-bred. Whether or not an 
impression will be attended to will thus depend 
upon the interest in it, or upon any other point 
of vantage which it commands. A tap at the win- 
dow may pass unheeded, but not if it be a lover's 
signal ; the buzzing of a fly in the room will dis- 
turb one person's sleep, while the rattling of a 



68 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

shutter or the creaking of a door will produce in- 
somnia in another. Each is quite undisturbed by 
what disturbs the other. Noises remain the classic 
example of such selection in the field of sensory 
attention because the ear, above all other senses, 
has had to get its training in that way. We keep 
away from disagreeable odors, we refuse unpalat- 
able food, we do not touch things the handling of 
which we dislike, we shut our eyes to the things 
we wish to ignore; but we are often compelled 
to remain within earshot of unwelcome or disturb- 
ing sounds, and cannot muffle the ears. Selective 
attention must accomplish this for us. We learn 
to endure what cannot be cured by learning 
to shut it out of our auditory consciousness. An 
analogous, but far more complex and less easily 
determinable state of affairs obtains in regard to 
the selective processes of thinking. 

The analogy brought forward by Mr. Galton 
of a chamber of consciousness and of an ante- 
chamber presents an instructive mode of viewing 
what goes on in efficient thinking. He says : — 

" There seems to be a presence-chamber in my 
mind where full consciousness holds court, and 
where two or three ideas are at the same time in 
audience, and an antechamber full of more or less 
allied ideas, which is situated just beyond the full 
ken of consciousness. Out of this antechamber the 
ideas most nearly allied to those in the presence- 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 69 

chamber appear to be summoned in a mechanically 
logical way, and to have their turn of audience. 
. . . The exclusion of alien ideas is accompanied 
by a sense of effort. . . . The character of this effort 
seems to me chiefly to lie in bringing the contents 
of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of 
consciousness, which then takes more comprehen- 
sive note of all its contents, and compels the logi- 
cal faculty to test them seriatim before selecting 
the fittest for a summons to the presence-chamber." 
And further : " The thronging of the antechamber 
is, I am convinced, altogether beyond my control ; 
if the ideas do not appear, I cannot create them, 
nor compel them to come." 

This simile sets forth that progressive think- 
ing is an intentional ordering of a vast, but only 
potentially available collection of loosely assimi- 
lated material. Successful mining requires that 
the deposits shall be really there, and equally that 
the means of bringing them to the surface and 
of extracting the ore shall be efficient. As a rule 
there must be both conscious effort and subcon- 
scious facilitation, — the latter a factor that yields 
uncertainly to direct summons. 

The attempt to recover the means by which we, 
advance in the mazes of our mental excursions is 
thus beset with the characteristic introspective 
difficulty, that of observing the machinery of 
thought while maintaining its natural sequence. 
Much as we may like to do so, we cannot compel 



70 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the eyes to look at the surface of the mirror and 
at the objects reflected therein, in the same glance. 
The normal interest is in the result, and the power 
to observe the process is one not readily devel- 
oped, — and this for the reason with which we 
have become familiar, that ordinarily it would be 
a hindering rather than a helpful attitude. Yet 
here, as in all varieties of endeavor, expertness 
may be cultivated, and brings its worthy rewards. 
Without maintaining that the extremely variable, 
even discordant descriptions recorded by invent- 
ors, artists, composers, authors, and others in re- 
gard to the genius of their several pursuits, at 
all supply what the psychologist is interested in 
discovering, it may none the less be profitable to 
consider one such account — that of Robert Louis 
Stevenson — for the suggestiveness of the mat- 
ter which it so attractively presents. It pleases 
this master of imaginative construction to speak 
of the moments of inspiration as coming to him 
in dreams, — waking as well as sleeping dreams, 
we may assume, — and the subconscious contrib- 
utors to his inventions are made to appear as 
Brownies. 

" This dreamer (like many other persons) has 
encountered some trifling vicissitudes of fortune. 
When the bank begins to send letters and the 
butcher to linger at the back gate, he sets to bela- 
boring his brains after a story, for that is his readi- 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 71 

est money-winner ; and behold ! at once the little 
people begin to bestir themselves in the same quest, 
and labor all night long, and all night long set 
before him truncheons of tales upon their lighted 
theatre. No fear of his being frightened now ; the 
flying heart and the frozen scalp are things by- 
gone ; applause, growing applause, growing interest, 
growing exultation in his own cleverness (for he 
takes all the credit), and at last a jubilant leap to 
wakefulness, with the cry ' I have it, that '11 do ! ' 
upon his lips : with such and similar emotions he 
sits at these nocturnal dreams, with such outbreaks, 
like Claudius in the play, he scatters the perform- 
ance in the midst. Often enough the waking is a 
disappointment ; he has been too deep asleep, as 
I explain the thing; drowsiness has gained his 
little people, they have gone stumbling and maun- 
dering through their parts ; and the play, to the 
awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdi- 
ties. And yet how often have these sleepless 
Brownies done him honest service, and given him, 
as he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, 
better tales than he could fashion for himself." 
In spite of this poetical transformation, the psy- 
chological affinities are recognizable, though fan- 
cifully disguised ; and when the dreamer comes 
to hold an accounting for the share of his intent 
and his prompted self in the joint product, he 
apportions the credit quite fairly. The Brownies 
" are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond 
doubt; they share in his financial worries and 
have an eye to the bank book ; they share plainly 
in his training ; they have plainly learned like him 
to build the scheme of a considerable story and 
to arrange emotion in progressive order ; only I 



72 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

think they have more talent; and one thing is 
beyond doubt, they can tell him a story piece 
by piece, like a serial, and keep him all the while 
in ignorance of where they aim." They " do 
one half my work while I am asleep, and in all 
human likelihood do the rest for me as well, when 
I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for 
myself." And though this sensitive writer is 
tempted to suppose that his conscious ego "is no 
story-teller at all, but a creature as matter of fact 
as any cheese-monger or any cheese, and a realist 
bemired up to his ears in actuality," the reader 
cannot share this doubt. Stevenson comes again 
upon psychological ground when he says : " I am 
an excellent adviser, something like Moliere's 
servant ; I pull back and I cut down ; and I dress 
the whole in the best words and sentences that I 
can find and make ; I hold the pen, too ; and I do 
the sitting at the table, which is about the worst 
of it ; and when all is done, I make up the manu- 
script and pay for the registration ; so that on the 
whole, I have some claim to share, though not 
so largely as I do, in the profits of our common 
enterprise." 

Dr. Holmes similarly acknowledges the portion 
of our subconscious acquisitions in our successes, 
and tells us that " we are all more or less improvi- 
sators ; we all have a double, who is wiser and bet- 
ter than we are, and who puts thoughts into our 
heads, and words into our mouths," yet equally 
does he realize that the inspiring source of these 
subconscious thoughts is really the conscious 
"grinding" self. "Dr. Johnson dreamed that he 
had a contest of wit with an opponent, and got 
the worst of it ; of course, he furnished the wit 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 73 

for' both. Tartini heard the devil play a wonderful 
sonata, and set it down on awakening. Who was 
the devil but Tartini himself ? " 

Interesting as it might be to cite other trib- 
utes to the participation of the subconscious 
in literature, science, and invention, it is more 
to the point to discover the principles involved in 
the ordinary cooperation of the subconscious with 
the conscious, of which the above and others of 
like import are but more interestingly expressed 
examples. For it is fortunately true that the more 
familiar, though less momentous or creative pro- 
cesses are as likely as the others to afford illumi- 
nation, and particularly along the obscure path 
of our present exploration, — the wanderings in 
the underbrush that with skill and caution may 
result in the successful flushing of the game. 
Such an occupation, as familiar as instructive, is 
the search for a word or a thought or a quota- 
tion or a relation of things, which has at one time 
been in consciousness, but which we cannot at 
the moment recall. 

" We wish to remember something in the course 
of conversation. No effort of the will can reach 
it ; but we say, ' Wait a minute and it will come 
to me,' and go on talking. Presently, perhaps 
some minutes later, the idea we are in search of 
comes all at once into the mind, delivered like a 
prepaid bundle, laid at the door of consciousness 



74 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

like a foundling in a basket. How it came there 
we know not. The mind must have been at work 
groping and feeling for it in the dark ; it can- 
not have come of itself. Yet all the while, our 
consciousness, so far as we are conscious of our 
consciousness, was busy with other thoughts." — 
Holmes. 

This impression of the attitude and the issue 
in such cases must be supplemented by pene- 
trating somewhat behind the scenes, and thus 
viewing what goes on rather as a piece of stage- 
craft than as an effect from the body of the 
theatre. Nor is it quite so simple a matter as one 
might, without trying it, suppose, to reconstruct 
the evanescent stepping-stones by which the gap 
between the conscious and the subconscious has 
been momentarily spanned. Surely Dr. Holmes is 
right in insisting that the lost object of search 
cannot have come of itself; nor is there any 
warrant to suppose it borne through the air on 
the wings of a Pegasus or from a mysterious 
beyond. What mystery there may be is in the 
baffling intricacy of the mind itself, and is inher- 
ent no differently in the submerged than in the 
exposed stepping-stones over which thought or 
fancy makes its way. We must accordingly take 
our clue not from those instances that do not carry 
with them the solution of their composition, but 
rather from those that do. 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 75 

Let us consider a psychologist's account of the 
recall of a forgotten word, and observe wherein, 
in such analysis, illumination lies. 

" In going through a greenhouse yesterday I 
encountered a vegetable joke in the shape of a 
curious cactus. Immediately I saw it I was re- 
minded of a similar one that I once saw in the 
Duke of Devonshire's garden at Chatsworth. It 
stood upon a bed of broken stone on the right- 
hand side of the hothouse as I passed through. 
There was a Plumbago capensis trained to the 
rafter above. A. and B. and C. were of the party, 
and I remember that B. asked me the name of 
the plant. Dear me, what was that name? A 
very happy day that was. We drove from Bux- 
ton. I don't remember that part of the drive, 
except that old D. told us twice in the course of 
it his old story of the witness and the judge. But 
I remember very well the ' Peacock ' at Rowsley, 
for I had been there before, and I remember the 
drive through the meadows by Haddon Hall to 
Blakewell. Ah, yes ! in the inn yard at Blakewell 
there was a cat torturing a mouse, and I remem- 
ber how indignant I was with the brute. Odd 
that I should recollect a little incident like that, 
when I cannot remember the name of the cactus ! 
What was that name ? Poor old D. He is dead 
now. How cold it was when we started from 
Euston to go to his funeral, and E. dropped his 
umbrella between the train and the platform. 
The name of the cactus ! It began with a ' C,' 
or was it a ' G ' ? And it had an ( m ' in the 
middle, or at any rate it had no letter with a head 
or a tail, and I think it ended with i s.' — Cine- 



76 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

reus ? No. Gamens ? No. Stay, had it not some- 
thing to do with wax? Or was it that there was 
a Hoy a farnosa close by? No, there is some 
flavor, some suspicion of wax or bees about it. 
Ap — no, it began with a C. Cim — Cam — Cer 
— Ceraceus — Cereus ! That was it ! Of course ! 
Cereus, and hence the suggestion of wax — cera. 
Such were the rambling memories brought up in 
my mind by the sight of the cactus." — Mercier. 

To what degree these moving pictures of the 
mind in operation, groping for an elusive name, 
are sufficiently realistic to stand as a worthy type 
of what goes on in these attempts systematically 
to drag the net of association through the waters 
of memory, in the hopes of picking up the object 
of search, will be more or less favorably judged 
according to the measure in which the recorded 
processes conform to our own habits. Yet the 
generic traits stand out conspicuously. In the 
instance cited, a more or less discursive revery 
was entertained, with the lost name as the com- 
mon point de repere from which successively — 
like the spokes in the hub of a wheel — other 
clues that might regain the object of search were 
started ; in other instances, a more stringent con- 
trol of the associative processes might have ad- 
mitted fewer irrelevant fragments of memory, or 
have glossed them over more transiently ; while 
in still others, and doubtless the majority of cases, 
the mental still-hunt would have been conducted 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 77 

by such suppressed and tentative steps as to make 
possible only a vague recoverability at the com- 
mand of conscious recollection. 1 

But the processes that come to light conform 
to the typical conscious associations of ideas; 
whenever we successfully retrace the steps of an 
intent, deliberate sequence of thought, — like the 
spider climbing back by absorbing the thread that 
has just been launched, — we come upon just such 
links and ties in the mental chain. The excur- 
sions, whether of business or pleasure, in the main 
follow the same mode of progression, tentative, 
vagrant, and yet on purpose bent, — such as de- 
pendence upon visual images, upon verbal sounds, 
upon logical links of resemblance, upon accidental 
concomitance, — and thereby manifest their com- 
mon kinship. It is true that the relationship must 
frequently be inferred from slight identification 
marks, that frequently our thought-processes are 

1 A more concrete analysis would read about like this : The 
first association aroused by the cactus was a visual one, — a com- 
plete picture, with many a detail, of the similar specimen which 
had been observed elsewhere. The occasion of the former obser- 
vation, through the semi-deliberate recalling of the persons con- 
nected with it, led on to other items connected with these per- 
sons, and at each new turn or gap in the associations, the mind 
came back for a fresh start, usually a visual clue, for the missing 
name. The next plan of attack is for the appearance of the name 
directly, not the sound of the letters ; and with this there mingles 
the meaning of the word as suggested by the root letters thereof; 
this double clue proves successful. 



78 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

so entirely submerged that the fragments thereof 
that float upward to the surface appear scattered, 
meaningless, and isolated. They are like islands 
scattered seemingly at haphazard along the coast, 
but which in the relief-map are seen to be the 
peaks of an irregular but continuous submerged 
range. It is because the associative and elabora- 
tive processes of the mind are so indefinitely 
various, — that the means by which one person 
recovers these lost fragments of his possessions, 
or by which he finds ^solution for the problems 
of his life work or the occupation for his leisure 
imaginings, are so certain to be different in detail, 
however similar in type, from those pursued by 
another. Yet the kaleidoscopic evanescence of the 
mental patterns, even though seen as in a glass 
darkly, owing to their lying so nearly out of 
range of the penetrating light of introspection, 
does not remove them from the field of compre- 
hensible sequence. Such mystery as they offer is 
no added or peculiar one ; it is the mystery of 
association itself, the elusive strand upon which 
are strung the beads of conscious thought. 

It is equally intelligible that these processes are 
only conditionally at the command of our intent 
and desires. They do not obey the summons of an 
imperious will. We cannot order a man to write 
a poem as we do to dig a ditch. Yet it is equally 
important to recognize the measure in which our 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 79 

creative efforts yield to the pressure of our needs, 
as of the measure in which they elude our pur- 
pose. Least of all does profit lie in acknowledging 
anything more than a subjective source for the 
feeling that what we have accomplished, possibly 
with unusual lightening of effort, is not the work 
of the one we know best of all, but rather the mys- 
terious gift of extraneous inspiration. In abnormal 
cases we meet with exaggerations of this natural 
interpretation, the ready assumption of a partly 
different personality expressing itself through the 
organism ordinarily utilized by our conscious fa- 
miliar self. Such a conception is psychologically 
illusory, and merely expresses in apt metaphor 
the familiar fact that the flow of thought, which 
at one time refuses to come at the behest of our 
own effort, at another seems to come of its own 
accord. It is certainly the exceptional author who 
can regularly tap the spring of his resources when 
purpose and leisure favor. 1 For the most part com- 
position seems to await — and yet not passively, 

1 The reader is not likely to overlook that for routine, not too 
severely taxing occupations, we ordinarily do command our re- 
sources, arrange our day in periods of definite work and recrea- 
tion, and respond upon occasion to the pressure occasioned by our 
own procrastination or by an unanticipated emergency. There are 
as wide variations in regularity of profitahle effort in the less ex- 
acting as in the more creative occupations ; and the measure in 
which the mind can be stimulated to activity by resolution and 
desire must be fully appreciated. 



80 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

but as though intentness of desire itself facilitated 
the issue — the arrival, from some outlying realm, 
of the material of its occupation. We are all de- 
pendent, as Professor Royce says, " even in the 
clearest thinking, upon the happy support of our 
associative mechanism." But most of us know 
how, in general, to prepare the soil for the kind 
of crop we hope to reap. We read upon a given 
subject, keep the mind turned upon it, absorb by 
means of the growing interest all that is germane 
to the topic, feel more and more the pressure of 
getting ready for the printer or the lecture plat- 
form, at last get to work, sluggishly at first, often 
with unexpected easing of the path of progress, 
with much revision and pruning, until at last 
our little effort is done. We have done the best 
we can ; we have held ourselves to our task ; we 
have avoided and dismissed irrelevant associa- 
tions ; we have filled the antechamber as full of 
attractive applicants as we could gather, and we 
have tried to inspire both consistency and bril- 
liancy in the personages that have thronged our 
court. If the levee has not been as successful as 
the court of a more gifted or a richer monarch, 
we must accept this fate as part of the inevitable 
endowment that creates men most unequal. By 
adopting such an attitude we are not curtly dis- 
posing of the inherent intricacy or mystery of the 
processes of thought ; we are merely insisting 



THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 81 

that the mystery, if such we call it, that surrounds 
the subconscious phases of authorship, is none 
other than the mystery that is inherent in the 
conscious phases. The former, by being more 
recondite, is apt to impress us with the wonderful 
and fearful make-up of our mentality ; it seems 
surprising that the mere associative processes 
should occasionally follow a logical bent, even 
when there is no visible logic-master to arrange 
their sequences. But our very recognition of this 
unusual character is a tribute to the more ordi- 
nary non-logical character of subconscious revery. 
The flow of ideas in our "brown studies," in the 
castle-building of imaginative youth, in the chaos 
of dream life, is typically an unaccountable mix- 
ture of fact and fancy ; if now and then the fact 
elements combine to make a half-consistent whole, 
and the fairies for the nonce desert their magic 
realm, and attach themselves to the service of our 
waking selves, is the mystery any other than of 
thought itself ? 



vn 

THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 

The assault upon the intrenchments of the sub- 
conscious is the more promising of results if car- 
ried on, not in the main by direct attack, but 
by flanking movements, by quick advantage of 
momentary breaches in the investment, by night 
surprises, and all the shrewd devices of strategy. 
Or, to change the figure, a deliberate effort to 
invade the underground workshop of thought is 
like the attempt to observe the constructive and 
domestic habits of the bees or ants or other light- 
shunning organisms. We induce them to enter 
the glass homes that we have prepared for their 
occupation ; but, after the habit of bees, they shut 
out our inquisitive gaze by a curtain of wax, or, 
like the ants, fall into confusion when we lift the 
cover of the darkened nest. The most promising 
strategical measure will be to use the dimmest 
illumination that reveals details to discerning eyes, 
and yet will not arouse the restlessness of the shy 
inhabitants ; or, if fortune favor, to secure speci- 
mens whose aversion to light is less pronounced, 
whose domestic activities now and then are carried 
on above ground. In so far as our reconnoitring 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 83 

has revealed the internal economy of the mind's 
occupation, it has disclosed a functional parallel- 
ism, a concordance of division of labor, and an 
affiliation of purpose between the conscious and 
the subconscious participants in the common weal. 
It is now essential that we study the temper, the 
bent, the policy, and the trend of the movement 
which we have just been examining in regard to 
its mechanism, — thus supplementing a knowledge 
of the working parts by an understanding of the 
genius of the whole. 

What, then, are the characteristic motives of 
the mental excursion, and how are they reflected 
in the gait and tempo of its progression ? What 
manner of character, as reflected in behavior, does 
our introspective strategy disclose ? Doubtless no 
two psychologists would give wholly coincident 
replies to this comprehensive query, just as no two 
artists would give the same pictorial rendering of 
the composition to which their eyes are turned. 
The manner of their execution and the quality of 
their ideals, the allegiances of their points of view, 
inevitably modify the result. In each endeavor 
realist and idealist and impressionist reveal their 
several tendencies. Yet the resemblances outweigh 
the differences ; and the common factors need not 
be obscured by the deviations in tone or in detail. 
If only we can render aright the dominating fea- 
tures as well as the spirit of the whole, our sketch 



84 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

will bear analysis, and serve to recall the appeal 
of the actual experience. 

This preamble is made necessary by reason of 
the position about to be taken, that the conven- 
tional accounts of the mental progression are, 
many of them, quite seriously at fault ; that the 
false perspective which they present is precisely 
such as to weaken and distort and obscure the 
intimacy of relation that really exists between the 
normal tenor of thought and those modifications 
thereof that most distinctively disclose the partici- 
pation of the subconscious factors. That which 
to our present purpose is the most essential is just 
what is overlooked or feebly portrayed in many 
& cursory inward contemplation. The reason for 
this is to be found in the uncritical tendency to 
accept, as the pattern of thought in general, the 
type of thinking with distinct purpose which to 
the student is important, and to the psychologist 
and to the man of science, equally with the man 
of affairs, is indispensable ; and we all have pur- 
poses in life, all have scientific streaks in our 
make-up, all have problems to solve, and all in- 
dulge in some observation of our own procedures. 
Yet the great mass of mental operations is not of 
this definitely logical type ; their motif resembles 
more closely that of a melody, or a poem, or a pic- 
ture, than that of a problem. It is not a running 
of errands, a carrying of the message from point to 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 85 

point by the shortest route, but a ramble in some 
one general direction, following, but not blindly, 
the winding brook or the tangle of woodpaths, 
with much loitering by the way and much yield- 
ing to the attractions of the moment. Or, if it be 
not wholly this, it resembles this meandering ex- 
cursion far more typically than it does the straight 
and narrow path which logically, as well as mor- 
ally, it requires some effort to follow. Some ele- 
ment of revery, of play of fancy, or at least of 
loosely connected thought-pictures, enters into all 
of our less strenuous moments, — in the aggregate, 
the vastly greater measure of our span of life. 
The mental loom is not rigidly adjusted to weave 
now this and now that set pattern according to 
the fitness of material or occasion, but is in its 
operation rather like the method of the Oriental 
weaver of rugs, who, under the traditions and 
conventions of his craft, composes the pattern 
as he goes, never wholly departing from the 
model, never quite repeating his design, alert to 
embody new variations in novel, fanciful combi- 
nations. 1 

1 In looking for corroborations of this view, I found a moder- 
ate appreciation of its importance in several sources, but none so 
definitely bearing upon the present issue as that of Mr. Frederick 
Greenwood: Imagination in Dreams (1894). I have profited by 
his exposition in this connection, and in the special study of the 
status of dreams. I give one citation out of many equally appo- 
site : " There is thought and thought. A great deal that is called 



86 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

If such be the mode of progress of much of 
our meditation, it is not only in itself important to 
recognize the fact, but the recognition strongly 
affects the manner of our interpretation and the 
spirit of our analysis. It prepares us to appreci- 
ate how large a portion of such progression must 
be variable, evanescent, with its associative links 
submerged below the water-level of memory, be- 
longing more to the subconscious than to the 
conscious realms. 

The road from premises to conclusion, though 
by no means always simple or single, is yet a 
highway, that, if lost, may be recovered by chain 
and compass ; but the sequences in the plot of a 
novel, or in the scenes of a play, or in the stanzas 
of a poem, though by no means capricious or 
without method, are not staked out by ordinates 
and abscissae. It makes a decided difference in 
tracing the roots of the subconscious whether we 
expect to find them growing amid the orderly 
beds of a trim garden, or in the natural tangle 
of the woods. Unquestionably the flowers of the 
mind are both wild and cultivated, and their vari- 
eties and affinities no less bewildering in the one 
group than in the other ; but typically are we 

by that name would hardly deserve it were desert in question ; so 
lax is such thought in grasp, so loose of intention, so broken by 
lapses into what we must call dreaming : it cannot be described 
as anything else, in fact." 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 87 

naturalists rather than gardeners, though more 
truly are we fearful and wonderful mixtures of 
both. 

The tendency that has been over-emphasized is 
the horticultural, rather than the unconventional, 
nature-like bent of our mental produce ; and the 
tendency has been also to forget how much of 
our crop has not been raised from the seed, but 
gathered upon countless expeditions, and trans- 
planted with much unbeknown carrying of other 
seed in the measure of earth needed for the 
operation. Thus does it result that we cannot be 
certain of the provenance of our choicest blos- 
soms, as we greet with surprise their fitness in 
the bouquet that sets forth the freshly gathered 
issue of our ventures. If the vista of the range 
of thought thus variously disclosed be a favora- 
ble one, it will be foreseen that waking revery 
and much that poses as thinking, and what we 
acknowledge as dreaming, are not far apart, — 
only different movements of the same composi- 
tion. The prevalence of dream factors in logical 
thinking would then be appropriately supple- 
mented by the discovery of logical factors in the 
progress of dreams. Conscious purpose and sub- 
conscious musing may be found in each, and each 
in turn retains its distinctive trademarks of person 
and interest, of manner and subject, of school and 
technique. 



88 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The contrast thus presented may be approached 
somewhat differently. It then appears as the 
contrast between the motive that leads to a brisk, 
direct walk, and to an idle stroll; between the 
guiding of one's steps by a mentally imposed plan, 
rejecting all solicitations of byway or loitering 
by the roadside, choosing both pace and path for 
a set purpose, and the differently motived wan- 
dering over hill and dale, with the incentive to go 
or linger set by nothing more definite than pass- 
ing interest, and with the goal placed where fancy 
listeth. What is characteristic of the mental 
excursion is that the habit of the one is reflected 
in the other ; our working and our playing selves 
not only inhabit the same tenement of clay, but 
together build up the character of our complex 
personality. We form judgments of our fellow 
men quite as freely and as validly from their 
behavior in leisure as in serious occupation, pos- 
sibly giving the former a higher personal rating 
because of its truer, more spontaneous revelation. 
The community of the two modes of procedure — 
merely different gaits of the same organism — 
lies in their use of a common material, common 
habits of association, common interests, common 
experiences, common inheritance. Naturally, the 
conventionally restricted, intensely striving self, 
guided by moral ideals and logical convictions, 
watchful of gesture and utterance, may give little 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 89 

suggestion of the natural, unrestrained character 
that comes to light in the privacy of undress or of 
the intimate circle. What appears in print after 
the blue-penciling of the editorial censorship is 
frequently a decidedly different product from the 
copy as originally submitted. It is an ineradicable 
difficulty in studying any group of associations 
that so much is unwittingly and in part uninten- 
tionally suppressed, so much modified in expression, 
so that the objective records reflect but meagrely 
the discursive and fanciful spontaneity of the 
living, mental pulsations. It is, indeed, almost 
impossible to throw off by a deliberate effort these 
complexly restraining influences and disclose the 
natural mind beneath ; so constant and indeed 
indispensable are guidance and control, rejection 
and selection of our steps, when purpose enters 
even in small measure into the conduct of affairs. 
For this reason it ensues that we must look to 
such memories as come to us in dreams, or in the 
dream-like moments of waking, to present, seem- 
ingly with exaggerated caprice, the fancy-free 
saunterings of the mind's holidays. Let me first 
focus these considerations upon a type of con- 
structive dream, one in which the purpose of the 
waking self was carried over into the dream-state, 
and thus acquired the characteristic motives and 
setting of the reverie, without losing the normal 
interest in the goal that imparts unity and direc- 



90 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tion to the whole. The narrative thus selected is 
related by one professionally engaged in interpret- 
ing the archaeological remains of ancient Baby- 
lonia. 

This is the story : * " One Saturday evening I 
had been wearying myself, as I had done so often 
in the weeks preceding, in the vain attempt to 
decipher two small fragments of agate which were 
supposed to belong to the finger rings of some 
Babylonian." After detailing the difficulties of 
the interpretation of the characters upon these 
rings and his dissatisfaction with the imperfect 
explanation offered and about to be incorporated 
in a volume, he continues : " About midnight, 
weary and exhausted, I went to bed and was soon 
in deep sleep. Then I dreamed the following 
remarkable dream. A tall, thin priest of the old 
prechristian Nippur, about forty years of age and 
clad in a simple abba, led me to the treasure- 
chamber of the temple on its southeast side. He 
went with me into a small, low-ceiled room without 
windows, in which there was a large wooden chest, 
while scraps of agate and lapis lazuli lay on the 
floor. Here he addressed me as follows : ( The 
two fragments which you have published sepa- 
rately upon pages 22 and 26 belong together, 

1 Cited by Newbold in the Proceedings of the Society for Psy- 
chical Research, vol. xii, p. 14. It is not essential for the use 
here made of this narrative that the recorded account should be 
(as possibly it is not) a perfectly circumstantial rendering of the 
dream-pictures ; likewise is the stamp of the dream-procedure 
clear upon the tale, even though certain of the more logical fac- 
tors may have been added in a more nearly waking state. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 91 

are not finger rings, and their history is as fol- 
lows : King Kurigalzu (ca. 1300 b. c.) once sent 
to the temple of Bel, among other articles of agate 
and lapis lazuli, an inscribed votive cylinder of 
agate. Then we priests suddenly received the com- 
mand to make for the statue of the god Ninib a 
pair of earrings of agate. We were in great dis- 
may, since there was no agate as raw material at 
hand. In order to execute the command there was 
nothing for us to do but cut the votive cylinder 
into three parts, thus making three rings, each of 
which contained a portion of the original inscrip- 
tion. The first two rings served as earrings for the 
statue of the god ; the two fragments which have 
given you so much trouble are portions of them. 
If you will put the two together, you will have 
confirmation of my words. But the third ring you 
have not yet found in the course of your exca- 
vations, and you never will find it.' With this, 
the priest disappeared." True enough, the two 
parts were put together, and the description was 
deciphered by proper guesses for the missing por- 
tions of the middle piece : " To the god Ninib, son 
of Bel, his lord, has Kurigalzu, pontifex of Bel, 
presented this." So the Brownies will decipher 
Babylonian inscriptions as well as invent tales of 
adventure ; provided they have a chance in the 
one case to rummage among the possessions of an 
expert Orientalist, and of a gifted story-teller in 
the other. 

Mr. Andrew Lang in citing this Dream of the 
Assyrian Priest makes an appropriate addition, 
that emphasizes how readily the actual solution 
may come either in the dreaming or in the waking 



92 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

state, and how characteristically different is likely 
to be the costume in which it appears for these 
diverse occasions : " I myself when working at the 
MSS. of the exiled Stuarts, was puzzled by the 
scorched appearance of the paper on which Prince 
Charles's and the King's letters were often written, 
and by the peculiarities of the ink. I awoke one 
morning with a sudden flash of common sense. 
Sympathetic ink had been used, and the papers 
had been toasted or treated with acids. This I had 
probably reasoned out in sleep, and had I dreamed, 
my mind might have dramatised the idea. Mr. 
Edgar, the King's Secretary, might have appeared 
and given me the explanation." 

Thus does that element of a dramatic setting 
which few of us lack — though most of us sup- 
press in the realistic intercourse of this work-a-day 
world — get its innings when the logic master is 
wearied and put to sleep. The cunning appren- 
tice, who all along has been looking over his mas- 
ter's shoulders, steals into the studio at still of 
night, sees the tentative and unassociated outlines 
of the sketch, the palette all laid with the proper 
colors, the brush ready to hand ; he guesses what 
the whole is to be, puts in a few connecting strokes, 
a touch here and a patch of color there, and thus 
prepares a surprise for his master upon awakening. 
For it is naturally the fact that each one of the 
missing details that led the dreamer to decipher 
his rings was in a measure known to him in his 
conscious moments. The suggestion of the earrings 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 93 

seems to have started from observing that the open- 
ings were too small for the fingers ; of the exist- 
ence of such votive tablets he had known ; parts 
of the proper names were indicated on the portion 
of the ring already deciphered ; the scene of the 
temple seems to owe its origin to the description 
of such an excavation by one of his colleagues. 
His tired brain, with its associative processes weak- 
ened by over-effort, required only a partial rest to 
see, as in a flash, the true key to the situation, 
which his unrestrained associative mechanism pre- 
sented in dramatic form and with some irrelevant 
detail. Had the solution not come at night, it 
might have come the next morning. The path- 
ways here are no flights of Pegasus ; they are the 
daily route of the ideas of a trained mind in a 
familiar country. 

It seems best to be content for the moment with 
this satisfying illustration of the process by which 
in progressive thought the many are called and the 
few are chosen ; yet it is important to observe the 
common characteristics of such instances. The 
first is that a letting down of the effort, a focus- 
ing of the mind upon a point, a little or a good 
deal to one side of the fixation point, distinctly 
aids the mental vision, just as it aids the astrono- 
mer in observing a faint star to look not directly 
at it but a little to one side of it. How far this is 
due to the fatigue in one overwrought group of 



94 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

brain-cells, how far to the fact that we thereby 
bring into action larger tracts of associative pro- 
cesses, or how far it forms a special illustration of 
the indirect method of approach characteristic of 
subconscious operations, it may not be possible to 
determine ; yet the suggestion is apposite that for 
intent reflection, particularly for the contempla- 
tion that fixes groups of ideas as yet held vaguely 
in the mind, thinkers have at all times resorted 
to the restful inspiration of a walk in the woods or 
a stroll over hill and dale. While such peripatetic 
diversion * may also possess physiological efficacy, 
its rationale seems mainly psychological, perhaps 
conducive to a more diffuse spreading of the at- 
tention over a wider, less accessible, and more 
vaguely illuminated area. We thus might almost 
say that distraction and the idler moments of con- 
templative revery are as essential to fruitful pro- 
duction as the intent periods of executive effort ; 
the trough of the wave is as intrinsic a part of 
its progressive character as the crest. 

Among recorded instances of important discov- 
eries emerging into consciousness at such indi- 
rect moments of leisurely occupation, when " the 
mind is at lullaby," I have noted the following : 

1 Is it not the same process in miniature that leads one, when 
the sought-for word or idea hovers near but will not alight, to 
try a motor divertissement, to twirl one's cigar, tap with pencil 
upon the table, or resort to the conventional stage gesture, and 
scratch one's head ? 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 95 

Sir William Rowan Hamilton evolved the intri- 
cate conception of the invention of quaternions 
while walking with Lady Hamilton in the streets 
of Dublin, the flash of discovery coming to him 
just as he was approaching the Brougham Bridge. 
Mozart had the aria of the beautiful quintette in 
the " Magic Flute " come to him while playing a 
game of billiards, and seemed prepared for such 
occasional influxes of musical ideas by carrying a 
note-book for their instant record. An inventor 
suddenly conceived the proper way of construct- 
ing a prism for a binocular microscope — a prob- 
lem which he had long thought of and abandoned 
— while reading an uninteresting novel. Professor 
Kekule tells how he saw the atoms dancing about 
in mid-air in conformity with his theory of atomic 
grouping, while riding on top of a London 'bus. 
In the attempt to recall a name that is on the tip 
of the tongue many persons deliberately occupy 
themselves with something irrelevant, finding by 
experience that this is an aid ; and the day-dream 
through which flashes a happy "Eureka," or the 
dream of deeper sleep that discovers the treasures 
that our laborious digging had failed to unearth, 
are equally instances in which the fixed intent of 
the more watchful consciousness is withdrawn. 

All this points to the fact that the large stores of 
accumulated learning which we carry in our heads 
lie in part near the focus of interest that occupies 
our immediate attention, in greater part lie in ever 
widening areas, — all permeated by an intricate 
network of highways and byways along which the 
goods of our minds come floating. What Mr. 



96 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

Leland remarks of the work of genius is measur- 
ably true for the favored periods of all workers, 
namely, that "it sweeps along, as it were, in a 
current, albeit it has enough reason left to also 
use the rudder and oars, or spread and manage a 
sail; " and though it is obvious that we cannot 
create the wind that brings the ship to port, we 
can guide the rudder and show our skill in using 
what breeze may come. Such a conception does 
not deceive itself that it explains what in fact it 
only describes ; but it places the emphasis at the 
proper point, and avoids error by assimilating the 
unusual to the usual ; it prevents the cherishing 
of false theories by shunning the assumption of 
marvels, and by extending the marvel of the com- 
monplace. In every step of thought there is the 
unaccountable something, the hidden and individ- 
ual motive power that supplies the energy ; "in 
the case of small steps, even the heavy and clumsy 
thinker feels sure that he does not trip ; with 
greater leaps, however, the danger of stumbling in- 
creases, and only the dexterous and nimble attempt 
them with advantage." (Hartmann.) Though in 
time the flights may seem longer and more dar- 
ing, and the contact with the earthly realities of 
consciousness may became so occasional and inci- 
dental as to create the feelings not of steps at 
all but of mysterious flight through the air, we 
may be assured that the feeling has no other than 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN MENTAL PROCEDURE 97 

a subjective basis. The enthusiastic prophet of 
the Unconscious may tell us that " the discursive 
and deductive method is only the lame walking on 
stilts of conscious logic, whilst rational intuition 
is the Pegasus flight of the Unconscious, which 
carries in a moment from earth to heaven;" yet 
the psychological observer cannot fail to notice 
the long periods of training and accumulation 
of experience that prepare the way for the mar- 
velous performances of the expert. Admittedly in 
the end, the individual endowment remains the 
unaccountable factor in the problem ; and most of 
us would make a poor showing with the seven- 
leagued boots of genius, were they suddenly to be 
placed at our disposal. 



VIII 

THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 

Oub main attention has hitherto been given to 
the plan and mode of conduct of the campaign 
of thought, though with recognition of the many 
and diverse interludes between engagements, as of 
the countless routine occupations that such cam- 
paigning brings in its train. It will be profitable 
to devote some consideration to the service of the 
preparatory drill and training for leadership as 
well as within the rank and file, and to regard also 
the participation of the subsidiary provisioning — 
the important commissariat — that does not figure 
conspicuously in the military manoeuvres, but the 
efficiency of which conditions the efficiency of the 
whole. Whether, to bring before us the impor- 
tance of these preparatory stages, these sources 
of supply, we use this analogy or some other, — 
such as the plowing, harrowing, sowing, and water- 
ing that precede the reaping, — we do so with easy 
recognition of the peculiar and complex relations 
that obtain in the mental world between the ante- 
cedents and the result ; recognizing more particu- 
larly, as in all organic products, that we reap only 
as we sow, and that the variable conditions of 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 99 

nature and nurture enter in to determine what 
manner of harvest shall finally issue. An essential 
portion of the maturing processes goes on under- 
ground, subconsciously, yet always in closest cor- 
relations with the visible growth. This dependence 
upon the subconscious we deliberately accept and 
utilize, persisting with our efforts for long periods 
without very tangible showing, confident, with fa- 
voring fortune, of ultimate progress. We speedily 
learn to abandon any real hope of sudden endow- 
ment by the gift of fairies, or the surprises of 
vicarious service by kindly sprites, expecting only 
the step-by-step advance that is the measure of 
our capacities, and welcoming such favoring cir- 
cumstances as fall to our lot. 

There exists in all intellectual endeavor a period 
of incubation, a process in great part subconscious, 
a slow, concealed maturing through absorption of 
suitable pabulum. Schopenhauer calls it "uncon- 
scious rumination," a chewing over and over again 
of the cud of thought preparatory to its assimila- 
tion with our mental tissue ; another speaks of it 
as the red glow that precedes the white heat. The 
thesis implied by such terms has two aspects : first, 
that the process of assimilation may take place 
with suppressed consciousness ; second, that the 
larger part of the influences that in the end deter- 
mine our mental growth may be effective without 
direct exposure to the searching light of conscious 

tora 



100 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

life. Both principles enforce the view that we de- 
velop by living in an atmosphere congenial to the 
occupation that we seek to make our own ; by 
steeping ourselves in the details of the business 
that is to be our specialty, until the judgment is 
trained, the assimilation sensitized, the perspec- 
tive of importance for the special purpose well es- 
tablished, the keenness for useful improvisation 
brought to an edge. When asked how he came 
to discover the law of gravitation, Newton is 
reported to have answered, "By always thinking 
about it." 

While the second aspect of this thesis is hardly 
susceptible of any more definite illustration than 
is afforded by the general cultural fruitage of our 
combined nature and nurture, the first aspect 
presents a precise problem, which the psycholo- 
gist approaches with such special equipment as 
his ingenuity affords. His method is to catch the 
moment of perception at the lapsing edge of con- 
sciousness and forcibly to reinstate it ; for there is 
an area in which, under favorable circumstances, 
the passage in and out of the range of the inner 
search-light may be rendered visible. There is, for 
instance, the common experience that something 
which we were just ready to speak has, by the 
rivalry of other intruded interests, been tempo- 
rarily driven back from consciousness, and leaves 
us adrift, the conscious vacantly asking the sub- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 101 

conscious self, "What was I going to say?" It 
is by a sort of fumbling about among the fading 
trails of ideas for some clue by which to recover 
the lost thread of discourse, that we attempt to 
arrest the fast receding lines of thought. A varia- 
tion of this experience occurs in writing, whenever 
a larger group of suggested ideas than can immedi- 
ately find expression appeals for notice ; the writer 
has the troubled feeling that, while recording one, 
the others will again slip from his mental grasp. 
In all original composition there occur constant 
relaxations in the tension of thought — at times 
the budding of a brief abstraction — in which the 
associations that had just entered the focus of 
awareness flit back into the shadow and must 
again be sought for when the light of attention 
in turn brightens. The very attitude of the effort 
to recover such evasive associations — the closing 
of the eyes to exclude the outer glare and relieve 
by contrast the dimness of the light within, the 
intent peering in the dark to catch the first glim- 
mer of the lost trail — is suggestive of the pro- 
cedure which the mind may be said figuratively to 
employ. In such wise may we occasionally detect 
the exit of ideas hovering near the margins of 
consciousness, when our interest makes us eager 
for their recovery. Frequently do we fail in this en- 
deavor, the failure inducing a submerged troubled 
feeling while the mental explorer goes forth and 



102 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

" comes back like the dove into the ark, having 
found no rest ; " and we either make the attempt 
anew under more promising auspices, or are agree- 
ably surprised by the spontaneous intrusion of 
the lost idea into our otherwise occupied attention. 
It is precisely the manner and occasion of this 
reentrance, so commonly unobserved, that is the 
object of our present pursuit. 

The psychologist must admit that he possesses 
no reliable means of arresting the fugitive and of 
leisurely preparing a psychological identification, 
or of shadowing his flitting movements. He is 
accordingly grateful to such peculiarly endowed 
individuals as possess more certain means of allur- 
ing such images to the footlights, or of project- 
ing them upon a screen for common observation. 
Such a magic-lantern of the mind seems really 
possible to favored temperaments ; and the process 
has received the not wholly appropriate name of 
"crystal-gazing." We may describe this gift as 
a knack of developing the subconscious images 
by fixing the eyes upon a reflecting surface and 
noting the fleeting pictures that form thereon, 
apparently without conscious direction. Naturally, 
so subtle a process does not remain steadily at 
command ; it is the occasional successful visions 
that illuminate the subconscious entrances of im- 
pressions that appear opportunely in this psycho- 
logical mirror. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 103 

A lady, 1 expert in such gazing, commonly sees 
a motley procession of dream-like pictures, and 
in the following instances was able to trace them 
to their subconscious source : Upon one occasion 
she was sitting at her writing-table near the open 
window and became dimly aware that an elderly 
relative in the room said something to her. The 
noise in the street prevented a distinct hearing, 
and, as will often occur, the incident passed by 
without further questioning. While tilting the 
inkstand she caught a glimpse, in the darkened 
surface of the ink, of the image of a florist's 
parcel. Arising from her writing, she went into 
an adjoining room, found the parcel, and was 
greeted with "I told you half an hour ago to 
attend to those flowers; they will all be dead." 
Here the verbal message is not consciously re- 
ceived, yet makes associations with the visual 
centres and projects an image, which, by the for- 
tunate habit of tapping the subconscious through 
visualization, is reinstated in consciousness. 

Before giving other instances of the exercise 

1 Miss X. (in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 
vol. viii, etc.) pertinently remarks that "it is just the things 
that we see without noticing at all, which the crystal is calculated 
to bring to our attention ; " and also notes as the requisite for 
exercising this power that " every crystal-gazer I have ever met 
has been a good visualizer." Iu illustration of her own powers 
she remarks : " For example, I have forgotten the day of the 
month. I read the Times this morning, and I chanced to remem- 
ber that the first name in the births was Robinson. My power of 
visualization enables me to create in the crystal a picture of the 
top of the first column, my memory, helped by this association, 
does the rest. I carry my eye along and see that the date is 
September 6." 



104 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

of this faculty, I wish to call attention anew to 
the fact that the process involved differs not in 
essence, but only in the manner of its manifesta- 
tion, from similar chance detection of subconscious 
associations. Accordingly, a few further illustra- 
tions in which the subconscious makes its entry 
through other portals will be apposite. Decidedly 
so is the testimony of one who, immersed in read- 
ing, comes upon the word " gasoline," and is 
brought to a standstill by the sudden presence 
of the odor of that substance in the room. So 
curious and surprising was the sensation as to 
provoke an investigation, which resulted in the 
discovery of a can of gasoline in the cellar, of 
which the reader had been quite unaware. Un- 
doubtedly the odor had penetrated to the room, 
and though not consciously perceived, became so 
when the attention was directed thereto by the 
solicitation of the visual channel. 

A different type of mixed participation of con- 
scious and subconscious factors appears in the fol- 
lowing : Dr. A. was walking along the streets of 
Paris, his thoughts intent upon an examination 
in Botany which he was soon to face. Suddenly 
his eye was caught by an inscription on the glass 
door of a restaurant, showing the words Verbas- 
cum Thapsus. This seemed rather an unusual 
legend, and now, with keener alertness to his 
surroundings, he retraced his steps and discov- 
ered the real inscription to be " Bouillon." It 
appears that the plant verbascum or mullein is 
popularly known as " bouillon blanc." Thus the 
hastily and subconsciously observed " Bouillon " 
arouses an association with its popular synonym, 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 105 

and after the manner of a waking dream, pro- 
jects itself as an illusory visualization, taking 
definite form by force of the dominant botanical 
interest. 

I have myself, while writing in a room in which 
talking was going on, inadvertently incorporated 
a word from the conversation in my manuscript ; 
and with equal unawareness have I responded to 
the use, by one of the speakers in the room, of a 
proverbial phrase, by later parodying that phrase 
in my writing ; and only in rereading the copy 
did it flash across my mind that it had been thus 
suggested. Analogous is the familiar harking back 
to become aware of the stroke of the clock or even 
to count the strokes, at a moment of easement 
in the attention devoted to the main occupation. 
The usual situation finds the writer intent upon 
his work, deciding, let us say, to stop when the 
hour sounds. This charge upon the subconscious 
attention becomes lost as the absorption in the 
writing increases ; gradually at a less strenuous 
moment the impression gains first a slight, then 
immediately a decided recognition that the clock 
had struck a few minutes ago. The intrusion 
is in this case of the external sensory impression 
upon the intent inner occupation ; the same direc- 
tion of intercourse appears in the " gasoline " 
incident, in the vision of the florist's parcel, 
and in the parodying of the proverbial phrase. 
The reverse and less usual movement of an inner 
memory-image getting itself partly projected into 
the external sensory field is that of the inscription 
on the restaurant door, and more intricately that 
of the "crystal vision " presently to be cited. The 



106 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

same appears in the following cases, both peculiar 
in that the subconscious impression provoked an 
incipient or actual hallucination. A person in 
an abstracted condition was handling some waste 
papers and some of value, the one to be placed 
in a drawer of a desk, the other to be destroyed. 
When about to toss the packet into the fire, 
there seemed to be an arrest of the hand, as from 
some foreign source, to prevent the threatened 
destruction. The subconscious recognition that 
the papers about to be consigned to the flames 
were the ones to be preserved, was here just suf- 
ficient to project itself at the critical moment in 
the form of a real sensation, an efficient restrain- 
ing impulse. Again, a lady walking down a hotel 
corridor towards an elevator, and presumably 
also with her thoughts inwardly directed, was 
confronted suddenly by an apparition that took 
the form of a strange man, — an appearance suf- 
ficiently startling to arrest her progress, and to 
awaken her attention to the fact that the door of 
the elevator shaft stood open, and that further 
inattentive movement toward it might result in 
a serious accident. " Here " (this is Mr. Lang's 
comment) "part of her mind may have known 
that the door was open, and started a ghost (for 
there was no real man there) to stop her. Pity 
these things do not occur more frequently." 

And now to conclude with projections from 
the subconscious upon the crystal screen : In the 
afternoon, in a conversation not addressed to the 
narrator, the name of Palissy was mentioned. A 
look in the reflecting surface showed a man hastily 
tearing up some wooden garden palings; and 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 107 

" before I had time to wonder what this meant, 
it was followed by another picture, all in red, of 
the corner of the library where as a child I kept 
my books, including one distinctly recognizable, 
which I have not seen these fifteen years, called 
' The Provocations of Mme. Palissy.' " It was then 
recalled that one of the provocations was that 
Palissy fed the furnace for his pottery with the 
household furniture rather than imperil the suc- 
cess of his labors. Here, as before, the associative 
processes had been set to work by subconscious 
auditory impressions, and when their work was 
done, gave it over to the usual visual channels. 
The appearance in the crystal upon another occa- 
sion was that of an intimate girl friend beckoning 
from her carriage ; and her hair, heretofore hang- 
ing loosely down her back, was arranged high. It 
appears that during the day the narrator had 
passed by this carriage, but she insists, " Most 
certainly I had not consciously seen even the car- 
riage." On the following day she visited this 
friend, was called to account for her failure to 
recognize the occupant of the carriage, and was 
surprised to perceive that the latter was actually 
wearing her hair in the manner which the crystal 
had shown. 

In such wise may we detect the entrances of 
perceptions from the outside world, all unobserved 
by the ordinary consciousness, that later is sur- 
prised at the opportune presence at its own hearth 
of acquaintances that found recognition without 
formal introduction. Undoubtedly this process 



108 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

goes on a hundred times when we fail to observe 
it, to one occasion susceptible of proof ; and this 
is precisely what we should expect by analogy 
with the more familiar processes of acquisition. 
Judgments and inferences upon data that are 
never brought into the focus of consciousness 
enter constantly into our sensory perceptions. The 
stereoscope offers versatile and brilliant proof 
that our delicately trained eyes accurately infer 
the solidity of objects from the distinctive dissim- 
ilarity of the two retinal images ; yet we never 
consciously realize that this is the ground of the 
inference. In apportioning the several values to 
be attached to changes of size with distance, we 
again perform a considerable range of complex 
estimates, not one of which clearly emerges into 
consciousness. Many optical illusions depend for 
their effect wholly upon the fact that there are 
inferential steps in ordinary perception ; the illu- 
sion takes advantage of these by presenting the 
exceptional condition under which they lead to 
error ; but of the inference, right or wrong, we 
do not become conscious. When we analyze the 
performances of the stage magician, we observe 
again that a goodly portion of his deceptions 
requires and induces the drawing of subconscious 
inferences on the part of his spectators. In all 
this the ear corroborates the eye. We distinguish 
the quality of violin or 'cello, of harp or piano, 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 109 

of one voice or another, predominantly, though 
not wholly, by the overtones that these several 
instruments enforce and suppress; yet of the 
basis of our discernment do we remain wholly 
ignorant. 

Experiment shows that we decide that the source 
of a sound is to our left, because the effect thereof 
is stronger in the left ear ; but our own observa- 
tion never informs us of the principle that we 
constantly utilize. Experiment has likewise shown 
that the effect of an illusion may persist, even 
though the lines that determine it have been ren- 
dered so faint that the eye cannot decide whether 
they are still present or have wholly vanished; 
and again, that in listening to a very feeble and 
receding noise, one becomes convinced that the 
noise is lost, when if the " imperceptible " sound 
be entirely stopped, there ensues a further drop in 
what seemingly had already touched bottom ; and 
once more, that when the eye is invited to regard 
a group of characters or objects, and after an in- 
terval one member of the group is again presented, 
with the request that the " subject " describe 
other members of the group in which it appeared, 
the partial or complete failure to do so is not 
incompatible with the presence of the forgotten 
detail in a cluster of associations seemingly spon- 
taneous to the " subject," but in reality initiated 
by the unobserved detail. It falls within the pur- 



110 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

pose of the study of psychology to bring forward 
the grounds of such inferences and associations; 
and so far as we are psychologists may we become 
partially aware of the subconscious factors in 
ordinary perception. The evidence is thus varied 
and convincing, that the processes of perception 
of the external world — some deliberate when not 
yet fully established, others never reflective at all 
— are in the ordinary use of our faculties as typi- 
cally subconscious as conscious in their mode of 
functioning ; and in virtue of this relation does it 
ensue that we hear and see and feel things, that 
guide our inferences, that enter into our associa- 
tions, that contribute to the training of our minds, 
that modify our tastes and preferences ; and yet 
all these factors enter but feebly into the realm 
of conscious knowledge. 

The extension of this principle to more general 
acquisitions and to the practical life lies close at 
hand. It is apparent in all the emphasis laid upon 
the influence of the milieu, in the home and in the 
school, in city and in country. It is the trend of 
such subconscious impressions that eventually leads 
to the toleration of, or insensitiveness to, all that is 
ugly or vulgar in the one case, and in the other to 
a refining discrimination and fastidiousness, and to 
the establishment of good taste and good morals. 
No stage of the process at all involves the con- 
scious study from the artist's or the moralist's point 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 111 

of view of the aesthetic or ethical issues involved. 
Teaching by example rather than by precept is 
not wholly unrelated to the teaching by the sub- 
conscious rather than by the conscious. A bright 
child learns more outside of the lesson periods 
than in them. A college education is valued, and 
a given college preferred, quite as decidedly by 
the traditional influences that are embodied in its 
spirit as by the curriculum that it offers. Persist- 
ent practice, even though not wholly intelligent, 
often brings about an expertness quite as readily 
as do the processes of conscious analysis. The 
artistic training and temperament deliberately lay 
emphasis upon the unanalyzed sensitiveness to 
subtle differences of aesthetic effect; and the skill- 
ful artist need not be, as he usually is not, an apt 
art critic. In music the picking up of arias by ear, 
when contrasted with the reading by note, is, again 
in part, though only in part, a difference in reliance 
upon the subconscious and upon the conscious. 
There is no doubt that in the extreme, the two meth- 
ods of apperception tend to become antagonistic. 
The too conscious contemplation of the technique 
diminishes the sensitiveness to the general artistic 
impression. The close geological observer tends 
to lose the general massive impressions of nature ; 
and Darwin records in his own person the resulting 
weakness of the literary and emotional suscepti- 
bilities as a consequence of a too deeply ingrained 



112 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

and absorbing analytical habit of mind. The gen- 
eral contrast between the apperception by quick, 
total, merged, affective impressions, and the suc- 
cessive and separate attention to logically selected 
detail, falls in large measure within the contrast of 
the subconscious to the conscious. Similarly the 
skill that depends upon knack, that enables us to 
do but not to tell how we do, — the billiard player 
depending upon his general impressions and feel- 
ings rather than upon calculation in striking the 
ball, — these in turn represent in the motor field 
the greater reliance upon subconscious training. 
And in the end, the contrast of temperament that 
inclines one to this and the other to that form of 
pursuit and mode of its cultivation, lies largely 
along the same lines of division. We are all 
more or less impressionists ; we are all more or less 
scientific ; for in all, the apportionment of depend- 
ence upon subconscious to that upon conscious 
processes acquires, as the character is moulded 
and our habits become set, a definite value, which 
is our personal equation in this relation. 

I shall bring this phase of our presentation to 
a close by directing attention, from an allied ap- 
proach, to the repeatedly emphasized fact that the 
associative mechanism finds its sphere of activity 
largely in the subconscious realm. It does so not 
alone in the intellectual acquisitions, but even 
more saliently in the emotional medium in which 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 113 

our personal growth so characteristically has its 
being. The stream of thought is emotionally 
tinged, and affective states play as elemental a 
part in its progressive movement as trains of ideas. 
The paths of association and the grooves of habit 
and memory are determined as influentially by 
pleasures and pains, by the more organic sensations 
that are obscure in their import but direct in their 
bearing upon personal welfare, and by the appeal 
of experience to our more cultivated sensibilities, 
as by any system of knowledge or the logical 
interpretation of data. The feelings, it has been 
delicately said, form the mother-mood of dreams, 
and, one may add, of much imaginative association. 
The odor of pine needles recalls not so much the 
visual picture of the forest and the trees, as it does 
the mood in which we wander among them, or 
through the mood arouses the picture ; and it is 
by clustering about a simple perception a subtle 
complex of deep emotional states that the Church 
evolves the effective symbolism of the church bell 
and the angelus. It is the sympathy of the mood 
that characteristically begets germane associations, 
as it is the emotional background that creates 
the congeniality of mental disposition that facili- 
tates intellectual intercourse ; and thus are im- 
pressions formed of which we render no conscious 
account. 

It is by a different utilization of the same 



114 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

process, too, that we often gain convictions for 
which we can give no reasons ; and personal likes 
and dislikes, suspicions and elective affinities find 
their point of origin in the subconsciously per- 
ceived indications of inward traits. As we find 
these justified by experience, we come to trust 
our impulses, first impressions, natural intuitions, 
even when they seem baseless ; for such is the 
natural logic alike of the subconscious and of the 
emotions. Nor must we construe this as totally 
different from, or antagonistic to, the ordinary 
inductive judgments. After all it is only in the 
expert that the judgment becomes so trained that 
it is safe to question a piece of reasoning without 
being able to point out the flaw ; to mistrust, 
without being able to justify the suspicions. Such 
impressions are strong and valuable in propor- 
tion to the solid foundation of consciously and 
subconsciously interpreted experience upon which 
they rest. It is thus alike that character and the 
knowledge that is power are laid down. Professor 
James sums up the ethical implications of this 
truth : " Let no youth have any anxiety about the 
upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may 
be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the 
working day, he may safely leave the final result 
to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on 
waking up some fine morning, to find himself one 
of the competent ones of his generation, in what- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS MATURING OF THOUGHT 115 

ever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, 
between all the details of his business, the power 
of judging in all that class of matter will have 
built itself up within him as a possession that 
will never pass away." 



IX 

THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

I propose at this juncture to consider with a 
more detailed interest certain failures of adjust- 
ment of consciousness to the actual conditions 
that confront us. The general status of such 
lapses, as also their service in illuminating the 
mechanism and supports of conscious operations, 
has already been set forth. Such a survey serves 
a purpose more profitable than that of a mere re- 
view ; it gives a vital, realistic touch to the more 
formal sketches that have preceded ; it affords 
an opportunity of extending in suggestive detail 
both the illustrations and the principles in whose 
behalf they have been gathered ; and it offers val- 
ued points of contact with the presentation of the 
abnormal varieties of defects of consciousness that 
is to follow. This special treatment is also war- 
ranted by reason of the common familiarity of 
such lapses ; indeed, they constitute the domestic 
variety of the species whose natural history is our 
special concern. A study of their intimate habits 
is certain to further our insight into the psycho- 
logy of the subconscious. 

It will be recalled that the atmosphere in which 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 117 

these lapses are bred is that of a mild or pro- 
nounced distraction, for which Zerstreutheit is the 
more expressive German term. This attitude is 
induced commonly by a central absorption in one 
occupation, while carrying on inattentively some 
other and more routine activity ; or, it may be, by 
a general lowering of the directive alertness ; or 
by a too anxious oversight ; or by the embarrass- 
ing claims of a too exacting task ; — all in turn 
profoundly modified and aggravated by a predis- 
posed temperament. For their distinctive appear- 
ance and mode of entry upon the scene, we shall 
presently develop suitable formulae. In pursuit of 
this end we require some consistent and pertinent 
outline of the typical phases of the mind's con- 
duct. The contours of such a piece of conduct 
would show in silhouette, first, the perception of 
the situation by the message brought through eye, 
or ear, or other window of the soul ; would show, 
next, how such message is offered to the appro- 
priate powers for interpretation, and for the elabo- 
ration, variably intricate, of the suitable response ; 
and how the bit of conduct is rounded by the fit 
and skilled execution of what it has been decided 
to do or say. What is here appropriate is that 
any one, or the whole of these successive links in 
the chain of mental reactions, may be sufficiently 
and intelligently directed by a subconscious type 
of adjustment. Though the factors properly form 



118 THE SUBSCONSCIOUS 

a unit, combining with like units into a series of 
expanding complexity of kind and number, yet each 
is naturally viewed as composed of a receptive step, 
accompanied by a suitable interpretation through 
which the process acquires meaning, and of an 
expressive step, which, as the issue of a prepara- 
tory elaboration, takes rank as a significant piece 
of conduct. Ordinarily these components fall into 
their natural places with ease and fitness ; but not 
infrequently an inattentive attitude towards por- 
tions of the procedure induces a peculiar type of 
straying from the intended path, — some lapse in 
the ordinary, well-adjusted relations, some dropped 
stitch in the routine occupation, some unobserved 
entry of a new relation that is mistaken for the 
old. The reins are too freely relaxed, or are re- 
laxed at an inopportune moment ; our habits take 
the bit between the teeth, and bring us to some 
unexpected situation, which the aroused conscious- 
ness, promptly or gradually, sets aright. 

To obtain representative data for such a sur- 
vey, I drew upon the experiences of a group of 
persons * to whom I had access ; and I present 

1 These personal experiences are contributed by students of 
the University of Wisconsin, and doubtless do not differ essen- 
tially from those that could be collected in other circles ; yet 
they naturally reflect something of the occupations of young men 
and young women devoted, though by no means exclusively, to 
scholastic pursuits. At all events, they form my documentary evi- 
dence for the general relations and types of frequency that alone 
are considered in the present aperpu. 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 119 

the collection merely as fairly representative of 
the ordinary behavior of the subconscious in the 
trivial, or at times the momentous occasions of 
daily life. Indeed, their commonplaceness is itself 
a worthy claim to our regard, as the fact that 
material of this nature may serve the psycholo- 
gist's purpose is a tribute to the intimacy of his 
relation to the natural history of the lowly and 
familiar phases of mind. 

We shall consider first lapses of the motor type. 
In regard to these, my data emphasize that they 
occupy the focus of the more common forms of 
subconscious activity : which means that, though 
the reduced awareness spreads itself over the 
whole procedure, it affects more prominently the 
motor response, the terminal, rather than the ini- 
tial phase of conduct ; or, that once the nature of 
a situation is normally perceived, our motor habits 
step in to perform the appropriate (or unintended) 
response with submerged awareness, possibly amid 
distracted attention. A peculiarly apposite recog- 
nition of this relation is embodied in the popular 
game of philopcena. Here a premium is placed 
upon the guarding of one's subconscious tendency 
to allow the complacent habit of assent or differ- 
ence to express itself, and specifically towards one 
individual, in the conventional " Yes " or " No ;" 
or in taking what is naturally or unobtrusively 
offered. It is surprising how quickly this charge 



120 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

upon the subconscious becomes lost amid the more 
vital interests of social intercourse, how readily 
the hand or tongue is entrapped into the artifi- 
cially tabooed expression, when the major atten- 
tion becomes directed to the channels of our real 
concern. A situation lightly perceived, with still 
slighter reflection, awakens the natural response. 
Subconscious doing ensues somewhat more readily 
than subconscious perceiving ; while the role of 
subconscious elaboration and interpretation can- 
not be so easily appraised. 

There is a somewhat artificial occasion which 
we may utilize to illustrate the natural relation 
that comes to exist between a sensory clue and the 
bit of conduct which it commonly arouses. 

We may desire to present a form of behavior as 
our natural unreflective habit, to have pass current 
at its face- value what actually has no redeem- 
ing basis in our native inheritance and training. 
For this attitude, particularly in its personal and 
social aspects, we have the apt term of affectation. 
One may affect a lisp, or a foreign pronunciation, 
or the broad a, or, with the changes of the fash- 
ions, an exaggerated handshake or manner of 
raising one's hat ; and always with the constant 
risk of lapsing back into our really " natural " 
habits. The affectation attempts to substitute arti- 
fice for nature, to guide consciously what should 
emerge subconsciously. The stage offers profes- 
sional occasion to cultivate such affectation ; and 
it is sometimes amusing to detect the inexperi- 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 121 

enced actor in reminding himself that he must 
no longer use his wounded arm, must continue 
to limp, or to reel, or to exhibit the manners of 
old age, or of the ruffian, or of the peasant. This 
artificial relation is interesting in that it presents 
in exact reverse the ordinary intrusions of the 
subconscious into the conscious field. The one 
formula expresses the fact that when the proper 
sensory clue is present, we proceed to react to it 
without intent ; and the other that, having only 
a fictitious sensory clue, we fail to act in spite of 
our resolution. 1 

The simplest type of subconscious motor re- 
sponse consists in carrying out a more or less 
suitable and habitual action, while remaining 
unaware of its accomplishment, — a lapse accord- 
ingly not of performance, but of notification of 
the accomplished service to the conscious self. 

A., already retired for the night, leaves his bed 
to lock the door and finds it securely fastened, 
and doubtless by his unobservant self; B., work- 

1 The more usual lapse of this temporary type occurs when the 
sensory clue is slight enough to pass readily in and out of notice. 
Thus if one has slightly injured a finger, one is intermittently re- 
minded by a sudden pain that it cannot be used for the accus- 
tomed service ; one steps upon a foot that is not yet sufficiently 
recovered to bear one's weight ; after operations upon one's teeth, 
one unintentionally disobeys the dentist's injunction not to eat 
on that side for a day or two. A more inferential instance, with 
almost no sensory clue, is that of a young man, who, after treat- 
ment of his eyes with belladonna, provided himself with the even- 
ing paper, quite unmindful of the fact that he would be unable 
to read. 



122 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ing at his desk on a •warm summer day, decides 
to remove his coat and finds he has already done 
so ; C, a clergyman, sends out the contribution- 
plate a second time, much to the consternation of 
the congregation; D., a railway employee, changes 
the position of a switch, unaware that he has 
already reversed it, and wrecks a train ; and so 
on with considerable variation of scene, plot, and 
dramatis personae. These instances clearly in- 
volve a weakened sensory apperception, inasmuch 
as the second action is initiated because the first 
performance was so feebly attended to, so dis- 
tractedly appreciated. Doubtless, more frequent 
than the complete dropping of the link out of 
consciousness is the doubt, the query, whether 
one really has wound the clock, or locked the door, 
or put out the lights, or posted the letters, or 
taken one's medicine, or even eaten one's lunch : 
and one proceeds to verify by actual examina- 
tion or by some definite memory-clue that it has 
been done. 1 

I must give at least one instance of this mem- 
ory-clue and its mode of working : — 

A student had been intrusted with some do- 
mestic errands on his way to the university. Sud- 
denly, in seeing the word "business" in the 

1 The complementary memory-failure occurs when one is quite 
certain that one of these habitual tasks has been done, and is con- 
fronted with conclusive evidence that it has not. It is the slight 
claim that the performance thereof has to our conscious atten- 
tion that makes possible each kind of failure. It is not so much 
as lapses of memory, but as inattentive occupations, that the 
instances are here apposite. 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 123 

course of his work, it flashed across his mind that 
he had forgotten the commissions ; yet he was not 
sure. In trying to recall his steps, there clearly 
echoed in his mind the squeak of the door in leav- 
ing the shop. This sensory impression was his 
surest indication, and proved to be a reliable one, 
that he had entered the shop and made his pur- 
chases. 

The instance is apposite in both senses ; first, 
the occurrence of the word " business " arouses the 
dormant association with the earlier, somewhat 
submerged conduct ; and secondly, the attempt to 
explore in this submerged region proceeds by the 
persistence of slight sensory impressions, — faint 
afterglows, — themselves quite uncertain, and not 
intrinsically connected with the central and im- 
portant piece of conduct. As in retracing the 
more conscious links of memory, so also in the 
case of the subconscious ones, there is a tendency 
to reach the focus through some suggestive path 
from a dimly lighted margin. 

Though this failure to make an impression upon 
the mental register offers the simplest formula of 
a subconscious lapse, it does not present the most 
common occurrence, presumably because it re- 
quires a fair degree of absorption. The most fre- 
quent type is that in which an action — usually 
partially inappropriate — is performed, or a situ- 
ation interpreted, under the impression that it is 
a different, an intended and appropriate one. The 



124 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

first type is thus the omission of a strand in the 
network, the second a partial substitution. Here 
belong the many comedies of errors, trivial or 
embarrassing rather than momentous, in the lighter 
scenes of life's dramas. Cases of going off with a 
stranger's hat or cloak or umbrella, or even his 
horse and carriage, occur, and furnish evidence 
that the absence of the signs by which we ordina- 
rily recognize our own may itself go unheeded. 
The successful functioning of the process appears 
in the familiar feeling of suddenly missing some- 
thing, at first not a definite something, — cane, 
umbrella, parcel, book, shopping-bag, — which 
one has been carrying, and has forgotten at some 
absorbed point of the day's commissions. It takes 
but a slight measure of distraction to submerge 
these superficial impressions so that they fail to 
perform the service usually expected of them. 
Lapses that intrinsically have the same status 
appear in varied situations : — 

Students occasionally go to wrong class-rooms 
(confusion of place), or find themselves on the way 
to the university on a Sunday (confusion of time) ; 
the college maiden, upon a social occasion, leaves 
the house in toilette de bed with her " History " 
note-book in hand (confusion of occasion) ; an 
actress, making a hurried entrance upon the stage, 
snatches a whisk-broom instead of a fan (confu- 
sion of objects) ; a clerk, eating a hurried lunch, 
while eager to start on his bicycle upon an urgent 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 125 

commission, carries his chair out of doors, and 
makes the initial movement to mount it as his iron 
steed (confusion of occupation). The degree of 
the confusion is presumably and often ascertain- 
ably determined by the intensity of the abstrac- 
tion ; a student may readily fail to notice, in the 
hasty departure in the morning, that the hat and 
umbrella that hang at his usual depository are not 
his, but more alertly looks for and observes the 
personal recognition-marks of these articles, when 
he selects his own from half a hundred others in 
leaving the class-room ; while the distinctive fem- 
inine bonnet does not provide the generic similarity 
conducive to the overlooking of the specific dif- 
ferences. 

An interesting variation of this generic type of 
lapse arranges itself, when the formula changes 
from a substitution of the wrong act for the right 
one, or the intrusion of the action into an inap- 
propriate situation, to the interchange of relevant 
parts of two activities, both operations being par- 
tially held in mind. Sometimes the two activities 
are allied members of what may be regarded as 
a single occupation ; sometimes the two are curi- 
ously unrelated, their connection being only that 
they are charged upon a common consciousness. Of 
the former I have quite an array of instances : — 

There is the serving of the strawberry-hulls, 
while the berries are left in the pantry ; the sprin- 
kling of sugar on one's egg and the dropping of 
the salt in the coffee-cup; the placing of the 



126 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

washed dishes in the refrigerator and of the " left- 
overs " of the meal in the pantry ; the attempt to 
thread one's thimble ; the intermittent dipping of 
the pen in the mucilage-bottle and of the brush 
in the ink, while writing labels and pasting them 
on glasses ; even the dropping of the watch into 
the boiling water, while consulting the egg to 
gauge the time ; or, in the excitement of a fire, 
the throwing of a lamp out of the window while 
carefully carrying down the bedclothes. The more 
striking interchanges are naturally those of un- 
related activities. The mind is charged with two 
tasks ; and the round peg drops into the square 
hole. A young lady receives a letter while she is 
engaged in putting her hat away, and tosses the 
perused sheets into the hat-box, placing the hat 
in the waste-paper basket. Quite common is the 
throwing away of the article while retaining the 
wrapping, even when it happens to be a caramel 
and the paper is put into the mouth. Unusual 
and yet natural is the action of the young lady 
seated in the train and eating a banana, who, 
upon the approach of the conductor to collect the 
tickets, realizes that she has thrown her purse con- 
taining the ticket out of the window and has care- 
fully placed the banana-peel in her hand-bag. Yet 
another variety ensues when the commissions re- 
quire verbal expression. Then we may encounter 
such confusions as that of the young lady asking 
a post-office clerk for " individual salt-cellars," or 
another demanding of a like official some " gray 
matter." The astonished clerk may have guessed 
in the first instance that the inquirer had two 
commissions on her mind, one for the article de- 
manded and another for stamps, and had uttered 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 127 

on the wrong occasion the request upon which 
her thoughts were bent ; but he could hardly have 
surmised that the other was so occupied with 
an approaching examination in physiology that 
" postal card" was intended when " gray matter " 
was spoken. 1 

There are two further groups of lapses in which 
the motor factors are prominent. The first, relat- 
ing to the persistence of habits after long periods 
of disuse, needs but casual reinforcement. It is 
obvious that if such a habit be resurrected upon 
an inappropriate occasion, it will result in a lapse 
of conduct, and further, that if such incongruity 
between the action and the situation is pronounced, 
it will require a rather deep absorption to induce 
it. One must be considerably lost in thought to 
overlook the entire range of corrective indica- 
tions, any one of which would ordinarily suffice 
for an adequate orientation. 

I might cite the instance, possibly mythical, of 
the mathematician who began to chalk some for- 
mula upon a black surface which he encountered 
upon his absorbed stroll, and presently was sur- 
prised to find his blackboard moving off (for it 
was the back of a carriage that had been wait- 
ing for its occupant) ; or that of a young man, 
who at one time had filled the position of a car- 

1 There is a combined linguistic and psychological interest in 
these verbal lapses that entitles them to a more detailed consid- 
eration. Such consideration is given them in an article, " The 
Lapses of Speech," in the Popular Science Monthly, February, 1906. 



128 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

conductor, entering in a rather fatigued condition 
a car that belonged to his old-time route, and be- 
ginning at the proper point to collect the fares ; 
and I have others that all illustrate how occa- 
sionally slumbering habits reassert themselves, 
and take control of the actions when the atten- 
tion is diverted or in abeyance. Such occasions 
are notably furthered by some familiar factor in 
the situation — one that arouses an " at home " 
mood, that suggests an easy response by the half- 
attention adequate to well-established bits of con- 
duct. 

The second type presents the converse situa- 
tion, which brings it about that the old accustomed 
reaction is aroused subconsciously when it no 
longer applies, because a change introduced into 
the situation is for the moment overlooked. Of 
this I have before me a pertinent anecdote that 
is quite as instructive whether literally exact or 
not, relating that a tourist, reading the papers in 
a Berlin cafe, was repeatedly disturbed by men 
entering and tumbling violently over the doorsill. 
Seven times within an hour did the accident occur. 
His curiosity aroused, he made inquiries, and found 
that these seven men were habitues of the place, 
gathering almost daily for a game of " skat ; " 
and further, that the worn-out doorsill had just 
been replaced by a new one, in the unexpected 
height of which lay the cause of the series of 
mishaps. Haec fabula docet that we cross an 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 129 

unaccustomed threshold with sufficient and yet not 
apparent attention to our going, to guide ourselves 
with tentative steps safely over any slight irreg- 
ularity that may be encountered; but that for 
the several entrances and exits, literal as well as 
figurative, that enter into our daily walks, we 
have ready a decidedly more subconscious, inat- 
tentive response that may, in the event of meeting 
new conditions, set pitfalls in our path. 

The relation thus involved becomes even more 
conspicuous when the acquisition of the new habit 
is interfered with by the presence of the old. 

Any one who changes from the operation of 
one machine, say a typewriter, to that of another, 
is quite certain to catch himself intermittently 
attempting to perform on the new machine a 
manipulation that is proper only to the more famil- 
iar one. When such operations have been largely 
learned by visual guidance, they more readily 
command a conscious attention than when they 
depend upon the less consciously realized muscle- 
feelings. A striking instance of the latter is the 
experience of one accustomed to the bicycle in 
trying to ride the tricycle. The equilibration of 
the bicycle requires that one lean with the 
machine, to the right in turning to the right, to 
the left in turning to the left. This in itself is 
contrary to the normal habit in walking, of saving 
one's self from falling by shifting to the oppo- 
site side, and had itself to be learned with some 
difficulty, because opposed to another ingrained 
tendency. Seated on a tricycle, the bicyclist un- 



130 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

wittingly and in spite of himself maintains the 
bicycle-balancing habit, and is surprised to find 
the simple tricycle, which one without any expe- 
rience with either can guide easily, quite beyond 
his control. The old habit persists, and will not 
make way at once — though doubtless it would in 
time — for the new adjustment. What is distinc- 
tive of this experience is the strenuous persist- 
ence of the motor habit in spite of a considerable 
and conscious effort to check it, — a relation that 
in turn is significant for the comprehension of 
unusual and pronounced lapses. Another exam- 
ple of such conflict of motor impulses may be 
arranged by attempting to write, not by direct 
visual guidance of the pencil, but by following 
the tracing of the point (with the hand and pencil 
screened from direct sight) in a mirror or system 
of mirrors. The new and unusual visual guidance 
tells one to move the pencil in a given visible 
direction ; but this direction of seen movement 
has always meant a certain kind oifelt movement ; 
and when that type of felt movement is set into 
action, it proves to be, by the visual standard, 
completely and variously wrong. The struggle 
between trying to push the pencil in the direction 
one sees it ought to go and in the direction one 
feels one ought to move may become so intense 
as to be quite agonizing; and the attempt must 
be abandoned as hopeless. 1 

1 It is well to note that in such sensori-motor complexes, the 
muscle-sense alone, though it has never been taught the accom- 
plishment, has picked it up; and so we can write with the eyes 
closed. This subvoluntary learning is also subconscious; and few 
persons would correctly appraise their real dependence, in ordinary- 
writing, upon these muscle-feeliugs. 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 131 

The sensory aspect of the mental procedure de- 
mands equal recognition. It now becomes proper 
to emphasize that in all these several types of 
subconscious action, the motor aspects of which 
have been singled out for analysis, there is also 
involved a recognition of the situation, a sensitive- 
ness to the suggestions of the environment, that 
both realizes its nature — though it may be imper- 
fectly or mistakenly — and responds thereto with 
submerged awareness. We have seen how actions 
may be initiated anew in oblivion of their accom- 
plished performance, because the sensations which 
should register their consummation fail to make 
an impression ; but this " absent-minded " insensi- 
bility is still more neatly illustrated when an article 
is deliberately sought, and yet the sensations by 
which its presence would normally be recognized 
remain persistently ignored. This is indeed an 
accepted mark of the distrait. 1 My collection is 

1 I pass by with slight mention instances of simple " anaesthe- 
sia," that is, the failure of sensations, through inattention, to enter 
the perceptive field. I do this because the relation involved, 
clearly important, is not likely to be overlooked. The inevitable 
contraction of the sensory field is familiar; and we have only to 
recall occasions when a question must be repeated, and we 
confess that we did not hear, at least with the mind's ear, what 
was said. Such is merely the common and necessary, but here 
untimely, relaxation in the attention-wave. Occasionally such 
insensibility does give rise to peculiar situations, which may be 
called negative lapses, in that, though it would have been natural 
and profitable for the subject to awaken to the situation, he fails 
to do so. The most striking instance in my collection is that of a 



132 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

replete with such lapses : looking for a handker- 
chief that is held in the hand, for a pipe that 
hangs in the mouth, for spectacles reposing on 
the forehead, for the umbrella grasped under the 
arm, for the pencil stuck behind the ear, for the 
package suspended from the hand, — these are 
commonplace, usually of brief duration, but in- 
structive, because of the attitude they present, the 
important query which they raise, in regard to 
how and why these sensations, usually sufficiently 
discernible, fail to qualify for consciousness. The 
moment of reentry into the conscious field is easier 
to detect than the manner thereof. The missing 
article, that all along lay within the easy field of 
vision, seems suddenly to assume a familiarity 
that identifies it as the object of search ; the va- 
cant stare or bewildered reconnoitring is trans- 
formed into the intelligent look of recognition ; 
the handkerchief held in the hand, or the pipe in 
the mouth, or the umbrella under the arm, some- 
how suddenly yields the sensation of its presence. 
I have, however, one incident in which this real- 
ization was logically arrived at : the narrator was 
seeking his eyeglasses, which he had begun to use 
only a few months before; and observing that he 

young man resigning himself unconcernedly to the manipulations 
of the barber, after having instructed the latter to trim his hair 
and shave his mustache, and who becomes aware only at the close 
of the operation that, through the barber's error, he has had his 
head shaved and his mustache trimmed. 



THE LAPSES OP CONSCIOUSNESS 133 

could clearly see the print before him, concluded 
that he must be wearing them, which proved to be 
the fact. What is common to these cases is the 
peculiar and often unaccountable fluctuation in 
permeability of consciousness to definite types of 
stimuli. The failure or omission of perception — 
both when the mind is not particularly bent upon 
receiving the impression, and when such is the 
attitude — is in itself characteristic, and may read- 
ily take the form of an erroneous perception, a 
faulty recognition, or a substitution of a subjec- 
tive for an objective trait, especially when favored 
by similarity of observable qualities ; and by such 
modification may expand into other variants of 
sensory lapses. 

A characteristic mode of lapsing of the sensory 
factor, in conformity to the psychologist's analysis, 
is revealed in the attitude of obeying or tend- 
ing to obey an impulse, with complete inability 
to account for its provenance, or with a vague 
haziness surrounding it, that eventually dissolves 
under a gradually rising attention. Awareness of 
impulse or action, without awareness of the incen- 
tive thereto, sufficiently formulates the attitude, 
which is objectified in finding one's self handling 
something or other with the mental query, " What 
was I wanting to do?" or, "Why was I doing 
this?" The principle is important, and finds ap- 
plication in pronounced and abnormal manifes- 



134 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tations of consciousness, as well as in ordinary 
deviations. Illustrations thereof are somewhat 
elusive; the lapses are evanescent, momentary, 
but significant. 

A young man, busy with his studies while his 
room-mate is away paying court to the one of his 
choice, is suddenly seized with the idea that it 
would be a good joke to disturb the courtship 
by telephoning to his chum that a telegram is 
awaiting him at his room. As he proceeds to the 
telephone, he is met by the landlady, who informs 
him that such a telegram has actually arrived. He 
is utterly astounded at the coincidence, but is 
forced to conclude that upon the delivery of the 
telegram, two hours before, he had received some 
vague, yet subconsciously effective indication of 
its arrival. 

In a garden, on a hot summer day, when all 
energies are relaxed, a mother requests her daugh- 
ter to get a certain book from the study-table. 
The request seemingly goes unheeded, for the 
daughter continues to loll in the hammock. Yet 

o 

presently she goes to the house and returns with 
the book and the explanation, "Mother, I hap- 
pened to see your book, and thought you might 
want it." Her surprise at the laughter that 
greeted her remark sufficiently attested her un- 
awareness of the source of the impulse upon which 
she had acted. 

Under fortunate circumstances a considerable 
variety of such subconscious perceptions may be 
detected; as a rule they escape observation, or 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 135 

are beset with vagueness and uncertainty. Indeed, 
they characterize an attitude rather than an objec- 
tive confusion, though occasionally they lay bare 
a suggestive mode of intercourse between the con- 
scious and subconscious movements of thought. 
To illustrate : — 

A student has mislaid her note-book, and after 
a thorough search fails to find it. The next day, 
as the telephone-bell rings, she instantly remem- 
bers where the missing book lies ; for on the pre- 
vious day, just as she was preparing to go to the 
university, note-book in hand, the telephone-bell 
had rung, and in answering the call she inadver- 
tently had left her book upon the telephone-stand. 
While riding a bicycle, I turned a street corner 
rather abruptly, and in doing so, I caught a 
glimpse of two ladies, and mentally recognized 
one of them as Mrs. S. Upon overtaking them, I 
discovered that the other one was Mrs. S. The 
first, less conscious recognition had been referred 
to the wrong sensory stimulus. Quite similarly, a 
young man engaged in some absorbing occupation 
is asked to go to the cellar and bring up some 
coal ; presently he returns with an armful of wood. 
He had been sufficiently attentive to appreciate 
that fuel was wanted, but a precise recognition 
was lacking. 

In brief, under comparable circumstances, we 
may show by our responses that we partly con- 
sciously appreciated, and partly subconsciously 
misinterpreted the appeal to our senses ; in part 



136 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

acted upon an impulse with awareness thereof and 
of its source, in part followed an impulse, which 
we took to be spontaneous, in ignorance of the 
suggestion that gave it birth, — in either case fall- 
ing victim to the plot prepared for our fallibility 
by a sensory inattention. 

At this stage we reach a formula that can no 
longer be evaluated in the objective terms of what 
is done, but becomes significant as an " absent " 
attitude of the mind, as a failure to orientate, 
as a temperamental " wool-gathering." The possi- 
bilities of defective response to the situations in 
individuals of such disposition, or to any of us in 
moments of " brown study," are indeed endless. 
Their interest lies in the obviousness and elemen- 
tal appeal of the sensations or simple inferences, 
which this condition fails to appreciate, in the 
absurdities which it tolerates. We explain the 
more ordinary instances by saying that we did not 
have our mind upon our task, that we were not 
thinking of what we were doing. Objectively, 
then, what occurs is not directly significant ; what 
is important is not the lapse, but the inducing con- 
dition thereof. A few instances that bring with 
them a forcible impression of such mental wan- 
dering will suffice. They begin with the familiar 
glance at the face of the watch, that serves to satisfy 
curiosity, and yet yields no articulate knowledge 
of the hour, or with the looking up a foreign word 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 137 

in the dictionary, that a moment later leaves the 
conviction of having found the equivalent, but 
without serviceable benefit ; and they end with the 
literary type of absent-minded story, in which the 
distrait individual rubs one foot against the other 
and says, " Excuse me," or knocks at his own door 
and awaits an answer, or, more intricately, in the 
reflections of the absorbed student, who, dimly 
realizing the passing of muffled steps outside the 
door (such as is made by rubber heels which she 
herself wears), mentally comments, " There goes 

," meaning herself. These instances, as also 

the related ones, in which we maintain even a pro- 
tracted revery, while our hands are busy in routine 
occupation, and we " come to " with a surprised 
feeling that we have so soon reached the end of 
our task, approach the status of a half -awake, half- 
dreaming adjustment to the situation ; and the 
incidents of this nature that could be cited from 
waking experience are of much the same type as 
the instances of motor and rational activity in 
sleep — partly successful and partly misdirected 
— which we shall presently encounter. For the 
half-orientated consciousness is not critical, is 
easily misled by partial resemblances, is sensitive 
to the suggestion of the moment, and subject to 
wandering. Through the exaggeration of this 
feature, the commonplace lapses cease to be com- 
monplace, and gradually acquire the traits of the 



138 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

more profound and even abnormal alterations of 
consciousness. 

This collection of illustrations thus suggests 
upon what various occasions, with what different 
tempos, the mind, freed of its normal guidance, 
continues to trot with the accustomed gait, stop- 
ping, like the horse that draws the milk-cart, at the 
proper points of call without direction of the 
driver (who for the moment may be dozing) ; 
though, like the horse, content at times with the 
mere appearance of a service performed, unappre- 
eiative in part of its meaning, subject to lapses 
and inconsequential wanderings. But horse and 
driver are endowed with very different psycholo- 
gies; and the relations that become established 
between them, however intimate and intelligent, 
reflect the limitations and divergence of needs and 
interests of the two. It is quite misleading to 
think of the subconscious that originates lapses, 
as a veritable, independently organized " psyche," 
or as a subservient understudy, however partially 
apposite and wholly legitimate such comparisons 
may be as metaphorical aids. The conscious and 
the subconscious (if we may clothe these aspects 
of our mental life in substantive form) are two 
souls with but a single thought, for the sufficient 
reason that they are but one soul ; and the unity 
of their heart-beat is inherent in the organism 
that gives them life. It is because the silent part- 



THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 139 

ner of our mental administration is only the sole 
head thereof under other guise, in other mood, 
with other, possibly more playful occupation, that 
his dominant habits, interests, endowments, experi- 
ences, pervade their common business. It is again 
because the one contributes to the joint undertak- 
ing, so largely unheard and unseen, that those 
who have intercourse with this concern, as indeed 
the director thereof himself, have little occasion 
to come into direct contact with influences and 
data that do not appear upon the books. It has 
been our present purpose to set forth, and mainly 
through the minor departures in thought and 
behavior, how constantly the subconscious par- 
ticipation permeates the entire network of the 
mental business. It is indeed the peculiar virtue of 
the abnormal method that it illuminates the rule 
through the exceptions ; and here finds in lapses 
illustrations of significant principles that prevail 
in the normal well-adjusted conduct of affairs. 



X 

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 

Of all forms of consciousness none is more dis- 
tinctive than that known as self-consciousness, 
— the integration of the successive reactions of 
experience upon endowment into a personal self. 
Fortunately it is not necessary for our central pur- 
pose — the appreciation of the conscious and 
subconscious development of the self -feelings — 
to extend our inquiries beyond the functional 
and into the philosophical field. What the term 
means for practical ends is sufficiently clear. It 
stands for an identifying linkage of the successive 
experiences with their predecessors, an assimila- 
tion of the continuum of mental life by which 
we grow older, grow different, and yet remain 
ourselves. The feeling of personal identity is thus 
something deep, intimate, and elemental, and yet 
participates in the fluctuations and varieties of 
mental experience. It finds its test in an easy 
orientation, the identification of the familiarly 
associated marks of person and place and condi- 
tion, that consciously or subconsciously slip upon 
the ready pegs of memory. We keep going an un- 
dercurrent of such personal orientation, promptly 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 141 

finding the place on the momentarily open page 
of our life ; and when we fall asleep or interrupt 
our labors, we carry in mind the bookmark that 
tells us where we left off ; it is recognized as the 
same piece of work, to be resumed by the same 
worker, preferably under the same surroundings. 
Indeed, to many writers the familiarity of the 
environment is needed for the adaptation of 
the self to its occupation ; strange surroundings 
distract, prevent the favoring mood, the " tun- 
ing" (Stimmung) of the mental instrument to its 
accurate use. We assort our several characters 
and capabilities and the qualities and properties 
which they require, and upon occasion summon 
the pose and the appropriate subconscious vein 
needed for the special office, being aided therein 
by the suggestiveness of the milieu and the 
incentive of the occasion. The donning of the 
outing suit throws care aside and makes us feel 
free and active, while the longing of the lieuten- 
ant in the distant loneliness of the Orient finds 
characteristic expression in " all that 's meant by 
evening dress." The self called upon to respond 
to the post-prandial toast is not the self of the 
lecture platform or of the wielder of the pen. We 
may still further apportion our talents, if we are 
sufficiently versatile, somewhat after the manner 
of Gladstone, who sat at one desk for his politi- 
cal labors, and became the scholar when he trans- 



142 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

f erred both his person and his range of thought 
to another corner of his library. 

When one awakens from a disturbed sleep, when 
the effect of a brief anaesthetic wears off, when the 
patient is aroused from hypnosis, we observe, and 
often with remarkable precision, the regaining of 
self-consciousness. A change of expression, a look 
about, a recognition of some familiar feature, and 
the orientation emerges, expanding rapidly to com- 
pletion : we have come to ourselves. In periods of 
profound grief, when sleep has for the time cast a 
quietus on our sorrow, the waking moment, with 
its realization of the sadness of the self, revives 
with keenly poignant emotion the depressed per- 
sonality. Equally vivid is the relief, on coming 
out of a horrible dream, to find that the awful 
fate and experiences that the dream-self was under- 
going are after all not ours. The variations and 
vicissitudes of the self-feeling are as subtle as 
familiar. From the slight alterations in moods 
and alertness and interest, occasionally foreshad- 
owing more serious and morbid mutations, which 
we significantly describe by saying, " So-and-so 
is not quite himself to-day," to the hallucinations 
of profoundly altered personality, there is a curi- 
ously various range of modification. At those sig- 
nificant periods in youth, when the character 
is undergoing its most radical development and 
maturity is about to burst forth, these fluctua- 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 143 

tions may be impetuous and intense. Excessive 
self-denial and despondency may alternate with 
causeless abandon and hilarity, and all sorts of 
wild and daring schemes may be seriously con- 
templated. Many adolescents, in passing through 
this stage, themselves feel that profound changes 
are going on within them, perhaps bringing their 
perplexities to a physician, with vague fears and 
suspicions, not uncommonly of an impending loss 
of mind. To such an one, a wise counselor (this 
in a tale, but it may be transferred to real life) 
brought consolation by saying, " Yes, I think 
that is likely ; and I predict that you will be well 
satisfied with the mind you are about to acquire." 
Such consciously felt doubts as to our own per- 
sonality are not dangerous, scarcely abnormal. 
They really emphasize the retention of the unity 
of feeling on the basis of which the change 
makes itself felt ; and it is the very want or per- 
version of that underlying self-feeling that con- 
stitutes the motive of a really lost or disordered 
personality. When one can reason as did the 
Scotchman, who, overburdened with the cup that 
inebriates, fell from his cart by the roadside, and 
at length arousing himself and seeing only the 
cart, mused : "Be I Sandy MacAllister or be I 
not Sandy MacAllister ? If I be he, I have lost a 
horse, but if I be not he, I have found a cart," — 
we may be sure that there still remains a service- 



144 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

able basis of self-feeling and a normal desire to 
orientate and reconcile the present with the past. 
It is these normal fluctuations and their founda- 
tion in the physiological and psychological organ- 
ism that are central in our present considerations. 
Assuredly a prominent, possibly predominant 
portion of the groundwork of our personality is 
reared upon the material of the subconscious. At 
the very base of all lie those organic sensations 
which, however vague or indescribable, yet con- 
tribute to that warmth and intimacy of the feel- 
ings that stamps them as our very own. "And 
thus," says Professor James, " it is finally that 
Peter, awakening in the same bed with Paul, and 
recalling what both had in mind before they went 
to sleep, reidentifies and appropriates the ' warm ' 
ideas as his, and is never tempted to confuse them 
with those cold and pale-appearing ones which 
he ascribes to Paul. As well might he confound 
Paul's body, which he only sees, with his own 
body, which he sees but also feels. Each of us 
when he awakens says, ' Here 's the same old self 
again,' just as he says, ' Here's the same old bed, 
the same old room, the same old world.' " The 
sensations yielded by this body-consciousness do 
not, as a rule, come close to the focus of clear 
awareness, but compose themselves in the back- 
ground against which our mental activity makes 
itself felt. The very concentration of a healthy 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 145 

mind upon the active doings of a busy world 
prevents any appreciable share of the attention 
going to these rudimentary sensations, the most 
useful function of which, we have noted, relates 
to the warning which they give, when disturbed, 
of an impending danger to the welfare of the 
organism. In sleep, however, when the outward 
stimuli are removed, these suppressed sensations 
have freer scope to be represented in the texture 
of our mental industry. All students of dream- 
life recognize as a prominent class of dreams those 
that reflect the intrusions of organic sensations. 
Dreams of flying have been referred to flutterings 
of the heart ; and all the various feelings of posi- 
tion, tension, digestion, respiration, that act but 
vaguely and massively, may determine the domi- 
nant tone of the dream-symphony. It is the pro- 
found modification of these feelings of well-being 
and ill-being that may become the starting-point of 
the disorders of personality ; the anaesthetic per- 
son, like the dreamer, feeling a lapse or a change 
in the sensations coming from the skin, invents 
the hypothesis that the body has become as glass 
or lead, or has even ceased to exist; and the 
normal person, by the same token more rationally 
interpreted, simply concludes that he is out of sorts; 
— a feeling of vague, organic change. Like all 
elemental data, these basal self-feelings resist for- 
mulation ; their efficiency as a physiological basis 



146 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

for maintaining our own identity, and as condi- 
tioning the fluctuations of our personal euphoria, 
is clearly established, and sets a practical limit to 
our analyses. 

About this central, individual, bodily self there 
forms a cluster of expanding selves, concerning 
which Professor James has written with equal 
interest and lucidity. 1 The personal self develops 
peculiarly intimate relations to the clothes that 
deck the visible ego ; to the home and its posses- 
sions that express alike the individuality of the 
owner's taste, the reward of his material success, 
and the sentimental attachment that goes out to 
familiar household gods. It takes under its pro- 
tecting wing the feelings for kith and kin, for 
those who share and make the inner sanctum of 
the family hearth. The wealth of emotional life 
attaching to this personality still leaves room for 
an absorbing devotion to one's life-work, the 
pursuit that matures the professional self. The 
most significant expansion of the self, without 
which, indeed, personality would lose its distinctive 
aspect, is the social one. Other selves exist in 
and profoundly influence our personality, and we 
cherish their approval, guide our conduct by the 
social sanction, and feel keenly any attack upon 

1 I refer to Professor James's well-known chapter on the " Con- 
sciousness of Self" (Psychology, chap, x, particularly pp. 290- 
316). 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 147 

our honor, any slight to our reputation, any disap- 
proval of our social conduct. Nor are we confined 
to one consistent social self, but offer a different 
aspect to our fellow men as host in our own home, 
as a club member, as a voting citizen, as a man 
of affairs, as an incognito tourist, as a devotee of 
gun or rod, or the garden, or old china, or rare 
editions, or whatever may be our private fad. Dif- 
ferent codes of propriety, different manners of 
address, obtain in these several phases of our 
social ego ; and each we assume as naturally as 
we adopt one style for our published writings, 
another for our formal, and still another for our 
intimate correspondence ; as we key ourselves to 
the requirements of diction suitable to public 
speaking, choose our words less formally, but with 
care, when we find the rest of the table listening 
to our talk, and are relieved to drop all ceremony 
and descend to the easy-going give and take of 
good-natured camaraderie. A further complex 
self-expansion, embracing personal, social, and the 
subtle but influential moral and spiritual sensibili- 
ties, leads to the shaping of character by ideals ; 
the determination of the kind of person we should 
like to be. With this intricate equipment of 
versatile personalities, with a wonderful blending 
of real and ideal strains in their pedigrees, we 
launch our character upon the world, sensitive to 
its encouragements and rebuffs, partaking of the 



148 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

common personal traits of our family, our race, 
our nation, our locality, our times, and yet per- 
meating the whole with that individual tone and 
temper that makes the delineation of personality 
the comprehensively inviting theme of historian 
and biographer, of poet and dramatist, of novelist 
and essayist, of moralist and psychologist. 

With this range of personal potentialities ever 
influential, though in frequent retirement, the con- 
crete expression of self that we severally achieve 
is determined by constant relinquishing in one 
direction and another, much yielding to fortune 
and circumstance, along with such devotion and 
perseverance to definite purpose and cherished 
ideals, such control of the immediate world without, 
and of the still more intimate world within, as we 
can, step by step, command. As considerable a 
share of this intercourse goes on in the low lights 
as in the high lights of consciousness. Self-know- 
ledge has been esteemed by sages from Pythagoras 
to Pope; self-examination is embodied in reli- 
gious cults and counseled by the practical moral- 
ist; while mutual confidences of petty personal 
likes and dislikes, virtues and foibles, enter notice- 
ably into the small-talk of social acquaintance. 
The self-feelings that impart motive power to all 
this intercourse and development likewise emerge 
with sufficient clearness into conscious ken to 
bestow an easily comprehensible significance upon 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 149 

the range of emotions, all of them with decided 
bearing upon personal satisfaction or dissatisfac- 
tion, all raising or lowering or subtly affecting 
self-esteem : pride, vanity, arrogance, triumph ; 
diffidence, shame, anguish ; estrangement, blame, 
envy, hate, anger, contempt, resentment; pity, 
sympathy, deference, propitiation ; ingenuousness, 
constancy, duplicity; — these suggest distinctive 
attitudes of our self towards others, or of the self- 
reaction within us to condition and occasion. 1 
Yet there enters into this personal life an equally 
effective range of subconscious factors. Not only 
do mood and disposition, sympathy and antago- 
nism, contribute their influence to the fluctuations 
of self-feeling without definite awareness of the 
motive of our cheer or dejection, but throughout 
are the feelings that introspection discovers, sur- 
rounded by an invisible retinue of attendant satel- 
lites that impart to human character the subtlety 
of its puzzling sensibilities. 

Most of these resist analysis quite as much as 
do the delicate fragrances of the flowers of field or 
garden ; and to summon them to mind, we can do 

1 The facial expression of this extensive repertoire of emotions 
has been realistically displayed in a series of no less than eight 
hundred drawings made by a facile artist from a single model. 
The facial poses thus recorded run the gamut of personal emotions, 
often with fine distinctions, but are by no means exhaustive of the 
psychological messages of which the play of human feature is 
capable. (Rudolf: Der Ausdruck des Menschen, 1903.) 



150 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

little more than to recall the actual occasions of 
their presence. We carry with us, without think- 
ing about it, the feeling of being well-dressed ; * 
we are vaguely aware that our presence is agree- 
able, an impression that serves as a half-conscious 
incentive to put our best foot forward ; that So- 
and-so is holding aloof, and another is insincere, 
and still another patronizing in manner ; and 
yet do these effects, to which the quality of our 
self-esteem is so sensitive, convey their message 
in language without words, — an impressionistic 
blending of colors upon the palette of our personal 
emotions. It requires the unusual disposition of 
a poet or dramatist to bring to expression what, 
once expressed, finds intelligent sympathy. So 
complex, so deep-seated, so emotionally suffused 
a type of consciousness as that concerned with 
self is intrinsically the issue of a subtle compound- 
ing, that affects mood, trend, and condition rather 
than conscious thought ; it serves not merely to 
keep alive and normal the feeling of a permanent 
selfhood, of a constant character and not a jumble 

1 I have called attention to the fact that positive feelings of 
this type are never as distinctive as negative ones: social con- 
formity does not bring at all as strong a feeling with it as social 
infringement. A man who has forgotten his necktie feels almost 
as deeply mortified as though he had violated the Decalogue; while 
to be out of style, or to oppose unreasonable usage, seems to 
require a type of heroism almost rarer than that to which we 
justly give honor. It is in such infringements that the intensity 
of the personal and social self-feelings may be realized. 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 151 

of symptoms ; but also serves to incline the spirit 
of imagination to this, rather than to another 
channel, to gently guide fancy as well as judg- 
ment, prejudice as well as reasoned preference. 

With this general appreciation of the complex- 
ity of the self, of the manner of its responsiveness 
to conscious and subconscious suggestions, we 
may profitably proceed to certain relations of the 
self-feeling that have been but casually included 
in our survey. Of the rivalry of the several selves, 
and of the practical development of the one by 
partial renunciation of the others, often with life- 
long regret, I have briefly spoken. These various 
selves that we might have been are by no means 
so wholly suppressed in the self that we are moder- 
ately resigned to be as is unreflectively supposed. 
These starved or suppressed phases of our char- 
acter still maintain an unacknowledged existence, 
and occasionally gain a chary hearing, or startle 
our sober self by writing a portentous message on 
the wall. There seems no better way of realizing 
the potency of these lurking pretenders to a place 
in our mental court, than by recalling through ob- 
jective and subjective evidence the several selves 
that we have outgrown. The awareness of change 
in the self -feelings that we come upon when we 
are reminded what manner of person we formerly 
were, is largely inferential, however intimately re- 
enforced by the warmth of recollection and rich- 



152 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ness of detail that make the old self continuous 
with the one we now acknowledge. The reading 
of old-time letters which we ourselves wrote is 
thus an emotionally different experience from that 
of reading those of some one else, however par- 
allel the life-histories of the two. Yet many of us 
must reconstruct the outgrown selves largely from 
scattered memories saved from the transformation, 
with which we try in vain to associate that inti- 
mate vital feeling that made the experiences so real 
and so momentous, while they engaged the actual 
interests of the self of the period. Such sympa- 
thetic communion with our older and with our 
other selves, like many endowments, varies widely 
in accuracy and extent ; to construct an autobi- 
ography is as incomprehensible an achievement 
to some, as it represents for others the one talent 
they can exercise best of all, as well as the source 
of their comprehension of others' lives and of sym- 
pathy with their joys and trials. In addition to the 
several selves that have found lodgment and inter- 
mittently ply their trades in our actual personal- 
ity, we must thus take account of the cumulative 
vestiges of the selves we have outgrown, recogniz- 
ing, as we do so, the organic integration of them 
all, through which the unity of a life shines forth. 
Doubtless it would be an exaggeration to say that 
it is as difficult to add a quality to our character 
as a cubit to our stature; yet the exaggeration 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 153 

would serve to enforce the psychological continuity 
of self -development that is as distinctive as the suc- 
cessive mutations of a growing self are momentous. 

While much of this strongly emotionalized ex- 
perience, which, more than knowledge, makes us 
individually what we are, comes into the sphere 
of consciousness, particularly in moments of self- 
analysis, a still larger and more vital part lies 
submerged in the subconscious areas of character 
and disposition, effectively modifying the organic 
efficiency and the quality of our talents, yet so 
subtly, so fluidly, as to impart an unanalyzable 
genius to all that is most worth while in what we 
feel and think and do and are. It is by no means 
true that the emotional aspects or ingredients of 
character, as indeed of the thought-habits of the 
mind, are coincident with those more particularly 
expressive of subconscious determination ; but it 
may be maintained that such emotional factors of 
our psychology penetrate more fundamentally 
than do the intellectual ones into the fibre of our 
being, and so are more intrinsically influences of 
the subconscious order, more submerged, more 
intuitive and less revealed. 

Peculiarly important for the development and 
assimilation of experiences as our own is the as- 
pect thereof that is related to the will. When our 
mental machinery is directed to new experience, 
is bent to incorporate a new area of knowledge, 



154 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

to acquire a new interest, we have in typical cases 
a sense of effort by which we have aroused the 
powers to action, and assimilate the new by means 
of the curiosity and capacity which is the measure 
of our efficiency in that direction. The sense of 
effort accompanying the mental output is very real 
at the time, and while it is fresh in mind is an 
unmistakable token of the personal tone of the 
achievement. It is our work; the pride in that 
which is good is ours ; the discomfiture or regret 
in that which exposes its shortcomings likewise 
our own. An author, if of that temperament, may 
feel the praise or blame of critics as deeply as any 
other disparagement or commendation of his per- 
sonal being. The work remains the creation of his 
will. Yet time, which psychologically means the 
fading of the memory-images under the rivalry 
of new experiences, along with the modification 
of the remembering self with the vicissitudes of 
growth, works its familiar transformations in this 
field as well. We reread our own books with quite 
an objective interest ; quite renounce some of our 
earlier efforts, finding it difficult to regard them 
as indeed the expression of the self which we have 
come to know so well ; and we can appreciate the 
attitude of Sir Walter Scott, who, on hearing some 
of his works read to him, exclaimed, " How proud 
I should have been to have written that! " 

The hall-mark of our own effort contributes 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 155 

essentially to the assimilation of our self-experi- 
ences ; they are ours by the feeling of activity of a 
warm, personal kind that embodies the association 
of their relation to the self. Yet this effort need 
not be of a decided degree ; it may degenerate to a 
mere nod of consent, the issue of a permit to enter 
the realm of consciousness by the authority of the 
self that is supposed to control this domain. We 
gave the attention — itself a motor effort-like atti- 
tude — that enabled the experience to be ours ; and 
the resulting tinge of personal cooperation begets 
a memory-image that incorporates it with our own 
self-expansion. As a rule, we thus distinguish 
what we have seen from what we have heard or 
read, and likewise from what we have dreamed or 
imagined in fancy. Such differentiation is one 
of the popular criteria of sanity, which thereby 
bears witness to the fundamental character of 
the trait. Naturally enough we are occasionally 
mistaken ; and it is said that by repeating our 
fictions sufficiently often, we actually get to be- 
lieve them ourselves. The relevant part of these 
illustrations lies in this : that the effort, the vol- 
untary consent, supplies the password admitting 
our experiences and the memories thereof into the 
home-circle of our developing selves. They are 
issue of our minds, outgrowths of our self. This 
principle is even more effective on its negative 
than on its positive side. It suggests that if we 



156 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

could get experiences, or memories, or sequences 
of sensations into our cerebral tissue without pass- 
ing the sentinel of consciousness, we should in all 
likelihood deny them that recognition of personal 
relation to us, even though we were compelled to 
recognize them as basking with proper warrant in 
the private corners of our mental hearth. And 
yet, to find them there and to recognize them as 
intruders, there must equally remain some ade- 
quate domination of the ruling self that rejects 
the invasion. The full import of this rather 
complex relation will appear in its application 
to abnormal phenomena ; its present pertinence 
is to emphasize that the peculiar personal tinge 
of experience springs in part from the will-like 
consent that accompanies the normal assimilation 
of experiences of the self. 

The breadth and depth of our self -consciousness 
having been thus surveyed, not alone introspec- 
tively as the reflection of the moment's occupation, 
but retrospectively in its serial metamorphoses, 
and comprehensively in its composite versatility, it 
remains only to reenforce certain central consider- 
ations of our analysis, and to present in one further 
relation the personal Leitmotiv of the psychic 
life and the ever-potent embodiment therein of 
the subconscious constituents. From the training 
and adequate service of a considerable group of 
humble but important functions quite without 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 157 

need of being dissolved in the medium of con- 
sciousness, to the subtle moulding of personal and 
social character in essential dependence upon sub- 
conscious support, the range of efficacy of our 
hidden talents has been brought to light; and 
this influence has appeared as of equal indispen- 
sableness, in the highest as well as in the lowest 
types of mental endeavor, with intent, conscious, 
analytic pursuits. It thus appears that man was 
not meant to live by consciousness alone, and that 
much of the admiration that it is natural to accord 
to human achievement, that finds its culminating 
expression in the hero-worship of genius, is in 
reality a tribute to the subconscious. The racial 
and national expression of this influence appears 
in the form of traditions, which, however concretely 
embodied in the vestiges of departed greatness 
and in the tribal and national epics that preserve 
the cherished story, survive even more vitally in 
the subconscious maintenance of ideals, and in the 
shaping of personal character from generation to 
generation by consistent standards. It is thus in 
the environment moulded by tradition that our 
present selves find a potent condition of their own 
development, and the perpetuity of the world of 
mind, of spirit, and of ideals finds its most certain, 
most organic surety. It was these influences, like- 
wise, that imparted unity and continuity to the 
great civilizing movements of mankind in art, in 



158 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

architecture, in music, in poetry, in literature, 
in science, in philosophy, in invention. The com- 
ment (by Mr. Leland), that the " man who built 
a Romanesque cathedral worked by the sugges- 
tion of minds which went before him," may be 
extended to all notable forms of human endeavor. 
Styles, schools, creeds, philosophies, come and go ; 
and the allegiances which they command flourish 
by the traditions that they embody, that give sym- 
pathy of aim as well as concordance of expression 
to the brotherhood of disciples. 

In all these cultural sequences of human destiny 
the great momentum of subconsciously absorbed 
and subconsciously transmitted traditions vivifies 
the onward movement, and leaves its indelible im- 
press upon the history and upon the quality of the 
race. It does so by compensating the advances 
that result from the penetration born of reasoned 
concepts, the practical mastery that is the reward 
of an expert rationality, with the intuitive insight 
that, though subject to waywardness and lame 
in defense, is keen-witted for the true, devoted 
with strenuous conviction to the right, delicately 
sensitive to the beautiful. Without the cumulative 
inheritance of tradition, as also without the bold 
flights of imagination, reason would proceed at a 
snail's pace ; for all art requires alike, critical 
acumen and skilled, deeply ingrained proficiency. 
The scientific spirit — the most finished expression 



SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 159 

of conscious activity — finds its saving balance in 
the impressible imagination, — the richest quarry 
of the subconscious. In all character, as in all 
achievement, there are talents more efficient than 
those consciously exercised, powers deeper than 
those we wittingly command, that enable us to do 
better than we know how. This recognition has 
ever been present in the conception of genius, pic- 
turing its incomprehensibility as an unquestioning 
response to an inspiration, as a surrender to the 
natural forces that seethe within, though reen- 
f orced by experience ; as in its labors indifferent 
to means, oblivious to the why and wherefore, 
but firmly possessed with the imperative impor- 
tance of its message, and leaving lowlier tasks to 
lesser minds that are constrained with painful de- 
liberation to marshal in simple order the limited 
resources at their command. In this appraisement 
of the constituents of character, of the service 
of ideals in shaping culture, as of the quality of 
talents that further mental achievement, do the 
traditional wisdom of the ages and the analyses 
of psychology find common issue. 



PART II 
ABNORMAL 



THE RANGE OF THE ABNORMAL 

Characteristic of modern psychological method 
is its march upon the practical problems of mind, 
with the combined forces of three distinctive 
modes of approach : the first assails the inquiry 
with all the elaborate equipment of adult intro- 
spective observation supplemented by ingenious 
experimental control ; the second fixes its ener- 
gies upon the origin and gradual unfoldment of 
processes and endowments, and upon their sim- 
pler, more direct, more lucid, and less intricately 
developed stages ; the third proceeds, in part, by 
strategy, by discovering exposed places at which 
what is ordinarily guarded and concealed is in 
a measure laid bare. Yet it is more than this : 
the abnormal method itself becomes experimental 
when it deliberately sets problems and determines 
conditions that it is able to impose upon favorably 
disposed individuals, or to observe in the varia- 
tions spontaneously offered by nature when seem- 
ingly in an experimental mood. The study of the 
abnormal thus extends the survey of the natural 
history of mental products and processes, and 
extends them particularly in the direction of 



164 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

pronounced varieties, deviating forms, altered 
relations of functional parts; and it likewise in 
a directly analytical temper lays bare relations 
that are inherent in germ in the normal mental 
life, but in their abnormal types reach a far 
more intense, more contrasted, and more directive 
expression. In complement to the comparative 
or developmental method of approach, it studies 
the phenomena in their over-ripe decay, in disor- 
der and dissolution, and most specifically in their 
exaggerated kindred, in the systematic rearrange- 
ment of constituents that the accidents of natural 
variation present, as if to meet the requirements 
of the inquiring psychologist. In concordance 
with the experimental method, it utilizes in much 
the same spirit the variations which it arranges 
or finds arranged, everywhere interpreting phe- 
nomena and elaborating principles with central 
reference to their bearing upon the standard rela- 
tions of the mental life. 

It is the method of the abnormal that is to be 
applied to the study of the subconscious. Such 
application results in an extension of the range 
of subconscious phenomena, and again in a richer, 
more comprehensive interpretation of the relations 
that have already been found to obtain between 
the conscious and subconscious manifestations of 
our normal psychological endowment. In such 
application the term " abnormal " should be liber- 



THE RANGE OF THE ABNORMAL 165 

ally interpreted. It does not intrinsically carry 
with it the imputation of disease ; for that the 
word " morbid " is more precise. Its underlying 
connotation is that of pronounced or significant 
variation from rather well-defined, fairly accepted 
norms. With waking regarded as the normal con- 
dition, sleep becomes abnormal; with sensibility 
to pain and to the ordinary stimuli of sight and 
hearing as the normal state, anaesthesia and intense 
absorption become abnormal ; in deviation from the 
normally elastic emotional temperament, respond- 
ing readily to the natural excitements of grief and 
joy, the persistently depressed tone of the melan- 
cholic is abnormal ; in comparison with the slowly 
developing and limited capacity for the manip- 
ulation of number-relations or of musical expres- 
sion, with which most children are endowed, the 
performances of an arithmetical prodigy or of a 
precocious musical genius are abnormal ; in con- 
trast with the recognized inability of the average 
man to rescue from the subconscious the vague 
associations of lapsed memories, the devices of 
those who are able to perform this sleight-of-mind 
are likewise abnormal. The mere uncommonness 
of a phenomenon has little relation to its signifi- 
cance as an abnormal variation ; the abnormal is 
not the monstrous. Dreaming is extremely com- 
mon, but presents a profoundly significant varia- 
tion from the normal flow of thought. Lightning 



166 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

calculators are uncommon ; but, however readily 
their marvelous performances excite popular curi- 
osity, they arouse psychological interest in so far 
as they serve to impart some insight into the 
processes by which such results are obtained. The 
hypnotic state is rather easily induced, and in 
some form has for ages excited observation and 
astonishment ; but it began to be profitably stud- 
ied when pertinent analysis indicated the signifi- 
cance of what curiosity had merely confused. It 
is not the mere fact of difference, but of a dif- 
ference that yields in analysis a knowledge of its 
nature, that gives to the abnormal its true signifi- 
cance. It is because the abnormal presents an 
instructive variation from the usual relations of 
things, that its study illuminates, and enlarges our 
conceptions of the complexity and marvel of the 
normal. It acts not only as a microscope, bring- 
ing minute features within the field of vision, but 
in addition, like the differential staining of the 
histological specimen, it presents in contrasted 
outline the delicate tracery of tissue that to the 
unaided eye must ever remain invisible. 

It is of decided importance to bear in mind that 
abnormal conditions do not occur capriciously; 
they follow systematic though variable radii of 
deviation. They require above all a favorably 
disposed temperament, as well as a momenta- 
rily disposed occasion. The occasions are likely 



THE RANGE OF THE ABNORMAL 167 

to be definite in character, and the phenomena 
as a whole to fall into distinctive, yet com- 
plex groups, requiring for their development the 
concurrence of intellectual, volitional, and emo- 
tional states. 1 Yet, whatever may be the nature 
of the outward initiative, stimulus, incentive, or 
shock that induces the abnormal mental condi- 
tion, the result of such exposure is by no means 
predictable, but assumes this or that variety of 
aspect, this or that grouping of dominant traits, 
by reason, in the first rank, of the inherent 
character, endowment, temperamental set, and 
momentary condition of the reacting mind. It is 
because the conditioning factors that dominantly 
influence the abnormal liabilities of the mental 
~Kfe are so closely and intricately affected by the 
most complex aspects of the personal, social, and 
spiritual welfare, that the resulting phenomena 

1 This only in their psychological aspects : unquestionably, 
abnormal conditions whose most distinctive traits are mental in 
type have equally pronounced physiological determinants. In- 
deed, there are no more valuable data contributory to the prin- 
ciple of interrelation between mental procedure and brain-states 
than the subtle and distinctive alterations of the former induced 
by direct fluctuations of the latter. This argument reaches its 
most definite force in terms of the mental alterations produced 
by drug-intoxication, by brain congestion or inanition, by localized 
injury, and by gradual degeneration. It is only because this 
mode of approach at present affords but minor analytic insight 
into the nature of the abnormal mental experiences of the type 
in which our central interest lies, that it is relegated to a subsid- 
iary place. 



168 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

are characterized by a seemingly irregular variety 
of traits. In these, analogy and parallelism can 
be established only in so far as we succeed in 
deducing consistent standards of interpretation. 
With this as our aim, and the principles deducible 
from the exposition of the subconscious in normal 
life as our guide,. we may enter upon the field of 
the abnormal. We are prepared to find our con- 
clusions affected by many hypotheses, and our 
explanations, by reason of their imperfection, at 
times descending to the level of description ; yet 
through the extension of our vista by the inclu- 
sion of the field of the abnormal, there results 
an enlarged sweep of outline and an illustrative 
richness of detail, which are in no small part the 
measure of our insight into the recondite ways of 
human mentality. 

The division of the present exposition into two 
portions — considering respectively the function- 
ing of subconscious processes in the normal and 
in the abnormal mental life — is thus justified by 
more than convenience ; it reflects an intrinsic 
distinction of some importance. In the preceding 
sections, subconscious processes are presented as 
contributory to the central mental occupation ; 
such occupation is guided by a directive purpose 
that is fairly deliberate, that has been critically 
judged, and proceeds with decided alertness and 
with awareness of means and end ; or in so far as it 



THE RANGE OF THE ABNORMAL 169 

deviates from this, it does so in degree rather than 
through any change of status. When, however, we 
have to consider a mental movement that is char- 
acteristically expressive of the dominance of just 
that group of activities that in the former case is 
subsidiary, we reach a formula that, though sub- 
ject to decided variation in the value of each of its 
components, comes to represent a distinctively dif- 
ferent type of equation. It must also be admitted 
that the line of contrast thus drawn between men- 
tal procedures, in which the dominant tone and 
issue is a conscious one, and such as are con- 
ducted under the leadership of subconscious rela- 
tions, does not fairly coincide with the distinction 
between the normal and the abnormal in the usual 
and commendable sense of these terms. Yet each 
distinction in large measure overlaps the other ; 
and the two represent concordant methods of ap- 
proach, not opposed points of view. Hitherto the 
central attention has been directed to phenomena 
that are fundamentally the expression of conscious 
elaboration, though with substantial support of 
subconscious assimilation. The attention is now 
to be transferred to at times a converse, at times 
a differently distributed assignment of parts, to 
a critical study of the phenomena that result 
from a quiescence of what is normally active, of 
a prominence of what is normally subsidiary, of 
an independent functioning of what is normally 



170 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

restrained, to so altered an ordering of the mind's 
occupation as to demand a different mode of 
apprehension, a different bent of the inquiring 
temper. 

Clearly the standard condition is that of waking 
thought, — a variable alertness of mind, responsive 
through the open highways of the senses to a com- 
plex and ever shifting environment, utilizing in a 
purposive manner the accumulated memories of 
former acquisitions, and following a set plan of 
organized effort. Naturally this rather strenuous 
formula may lose its sterner features and yet re- 
main equally typical ; and naturally, too, there is a 
range of transitional states, not wholly conform- 
ing to the formula of waking life, not wholly 
assimilated to the converse distribution of mental 
parts, for which no single name is adequate. Were 
such a term available, it would serve as the per- 
tinent heading to this portion of our descriptive 
survey. Its most general approximation is the term 
dreaming, — specifically applied to the recallable 
mental occupations of normal sleep, but readily 
extended in consistent analogy to a larger range 
of mental experiences under dissimilar occasions. 
It will accordingly be natural and profitable to 
begin the survey of abnormal types of subcon- 
scious action by a somewhat intimate study of 
the significant world of dreams. From this fa- 
miliar and intelligible starting-point, the group 



THE RANGE OF THE ABNORMAL 171 

of deviations from the normal, most relevant to 
the study of the subconscious, radiates in several 
directions, which together represent the natural 
history of the divergent phases of consciousness. 
States of distraction, of revery, of ecstasy, of 
marked automatism, of exaggerated suggestibil- 
ity, of artificial dissociations, of somnambulism, 
of intoxication, of delirium, of hallucination, of 
altered personality, — these indicate the more im- 
portant abnormalities, in which subconscious pro- 
cedures figure prominently, and require differently 
constituted f ormulse to represent the several modes 
of participation in their nature, of conscious and 
subconscious factors. But what our terminology 
thus readily labels, our psychological chemistry 
has serious difficulty in analyzing ; such analysis 
is the task to which the succeeding sections are 
devoted. 

The argument that is to be carried in mind to 
impart a singleness of purpose to the presentation 
of distinctly diverse phenomena may be briefly set 
forth. Normal mental activity is the complex 
resultant of a considerable range of systematically 
coordinated factors, each contributing a distinctive 
element to the whole ; the abeyance, defect, or 
distortion of any such factor, or related group of 
factors, is likely to occur by momentary incapacity 
or constitutional disorder of certain gearings of 
our mental machinery. So complexly developed 



172 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

an organism as the human mind is certain to 
exhibit the defects of its complexity, to be liable 
to disarrangement along the cleavage-lines of its 
organic growth, to show the effect of strain or 
of dropped stitches, at the seams, so to speak. 
Wherever there is mental maladjustment or dis- 
order, it appears partly as an abnormal relation 
of consciousness ; yet the larger field of mental 
derangement may be dismissed from our survey. 
Our concern is profitably with such deviations only 
as retain a decided measure and type of relation 
with normal consciousness ; their affiliation must 
be predominantly with the normal ; the standards 
by which their peculiar status is to be appraised 
remain those of the normal mental relations. We 
thus disregard the entire range of the insanities 
in the more technical sense; and we continue to 
limit attention among the remaining phenomena 
of mental abnormality, to such as contain some 
illumination of the participation of subconscious 
factors, — yet of the subconscious in that more 
comprehensive sense which the combined con- 
siderations that have thus far occupied us have 
jointly established. More particularly have we 
noted how closely the subconscious movement of 
thought is related to the subvoluntary direction 
thereof, the issue in each case of a relaxation of 
oversight, of a falling back upon the more spon- 
taneous impulses. Again, we have noted the possi- 



THE RANGE OF THE ABNORMAL 173 

bilities by exaggeration of normal susceptibilities, 
of pronounced, in their extremes even startling, 
alterations of consciousness. Decided and syste- 
matic insensibility to the environment, a marked 
loss of the awareness that normally accompanies 
thought and expression, these and other abnormal 
subconscious phenomena are but exaggerations of 
what slightly and momentarily occurs in the ordi- 
nary range of normal experience. In addition, the 
personal aspects of consciousness, the coherent 
integration of experience, is itself subject to lapse 
and disorder, and thereby enlarges the range of 
abnormalities of consciousness. In brief, in what- 
ever direction we are able to record variations of 
consciousness that still maintain vital relations to 
just those considerations that thus far have marked 
the channel of our course, shall we continue to 
profit by their record and systematic study. Yet 
it would be misleading to posit such a course as a 
wholly logical one, with the goal visible from the 
start, and each turn in the route made necessary 
by the one before it. We must admit that the 
whole is an empirical procedure ; we recognize 
certain interesting points in the general area of 
our survey, and lay our course to include them; 
yet we do this not at haphazard, but for assign- 
able motives, with consistent interests. Our selec- 
tion of topics and the perspective of emphasis 
thus become intelligible, as a rather zigzag tour 



174 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

through France would become so, when once we 
understand that the plan thereof was determined 
by a central interest in Gothic architecture, and 
when we comprehend that the historic influences 
that determined the location of the great Gothic 
monuments are themselves accountable in terms 
of human motives and fortunes, as deposits of 
great tidal waves of culture. With such inevitable 
mingling of plan and expediency, such compromise 
of ideal procedure to practical knowledge, may 
we follow the trail of the subconscious in its 
meanderings through the realms of abnormal 
psychology. 



n 

DEEAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 

Dreams are such vivid and familiar, and yet 
impressive mental experiences, that they possess 
a unique advantage as a means of insight into 
the nature of abnormal movements of the mind. 
However ready to admit the dullness and vapidity 
of the dreams of others, each one finds in his own 
dreams an individual interest, and is attracted by 
their glowing realism, their brilliancy and dar- 
ing. This personal appeal of dreams, however 
natural, has ever distracted and continues to dis- 
tract attention from their psychological import. 
Indeed, from the dawn of history, and with un- 
broken continuity from primitive peoples to the 
unschooled of our own civilization, have dreams 
been appraised as portentous revelations, with their 
every detail curiously significant. From the in- 
terpreter of dreams of this early stage of culture 
to their psychological study is a long, long step, 
— a common theme, but a world-wide difference 
in point of view. 

Two sets of data are particularly in point for 
our present pursuit : the first relates to the nature 
and occasioning inducements of the dream-state ; 



176 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

and the second to the characteristics, positive 
and negative, of the movement of thought in 
dream-consciousness, particularly in terms of the 
change in value of the several contributory fac- 
tors in dreaming in contrast with waking occupa- 
tion." As to the former, in spite of much apposite 
knowledge in regard to the physiology of sleep, 
psychology must practically take up the problem 
single-handed; there are interesting hypotheses 
and some corroborative observations 1 concerning 
what may go on in the nervous system during 
dreaming, but nothing comprehensive and demon- 
strable. It will suffice to bear in mind that dreams 
occur typically (though their occurrence at other 
periods is well established) in lighter sleep, par- 
ticularly just before awaking ; that they pertain 
to transitional states, and by virtue of this trait 
may, under favoring circumstance, be reinstated 
in the waking memory, and surveyed and re- 
corded by the light of retrospection ; 2 that they 

1 Certain of these possess decided psychological value, and have 
been taken into account in formulating the status of the dream- 
consciousness here set forth. 

2 There are two problems that properly present themselves, but 
cannot be here considered: Do dreams persist in all stages of 
sleep ? and, Do the dreams that we can recall adequately represent 
the whole range of dream-life ? The position is substantially war- 
ranted that a sleep frequently occurs that submerges mental 
processes so deeply as to sink them far below the level of any 
ordinary mental awareness, and may legitimately be termed a 
dreamless sleep; and again, is the position warranted that accepts 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 177 

are of brief duration, either lapsing into deeper 
and practically dreamless sleep, or finding their 
dissolution in waking. Indeed, as will appear 
in the sequel, the very same disturbance that 
gradually or even suddenly awakens the sleeper 
sets off a train of dream-thought ; naturally the 
dreamer, unaware of the true sequence of events, 
is surprised at the fitness of the denouement. 
Most characteristically does dreaming present a 
relaxation, a pronounced abeyance of the vigor 
and of the grasp of mental construction ; the 
change is not one of degree only, but even more 
distinctively of type. In dreaming the mind sur- 
renders its directive guidance, and its sequences of 
occupation are more at the mercy of casual intru- 
sions and inconsequential fluctuations. Nothing 
is less predictable than the content and sequence 
of detail of a dream ; but the quality of its gait 
and the physiognomy of its features conform to 
generic types that, though difficult of description, 
are readily pictured in the light of our individual 
dream-experience. It is also significant that states 
of partial, undeveloped dreaming partake in minor 

the testimony of memory, controlled by the usual experimental 
precautions (in this instance, the recognition of the many dreams 
that occur, but are forgotten), as worthy of the same regard as 
attaches to the careful introspective account of any of our mental 
procedures ? This is not merely saying that we must be content 
with the best evidence available, but it distinctly places a high 
introspective value upon the data of dream-remembrance. 



178 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

measure of these same characters. Prominent is 
the contraction of the field of attention ; we stare 
vacantly or half close the eyes in abstracted rev- 
ery, and for such moments, as well as for sleep, 
seek quiet seclusion, empty the mind of all con- 
cern, close the windows of the soul, relieve the 
body of confining sensations or tension of position, 
and idly drift into Nirvana. It is well to recog- 
nize the physiological aspect of this condition. 
We may be overcome by drowsiness or by mental 
wandering in spite of resistance, as, relaxing in 
the genial warmth of the fire, we yield to idle 
pictures in the flames or to soothing slumber; 
and yet unusual effort or excitement, equally with 
a specific stimulant, such as coffee, may counter- 
act these physiological inducements and keep us 
awake and at work, though with intermittent 
tendency to abstracted wandering. Often when 
we use the lash, we are compelled to admit, upon 
reviewing our work the next morning, that it 
lacks the vigor of our more alert moods. This 
less brisk direction of the mind's flight, this lesser 
control of its flitting and perching, induces a 
greater responsiveness to the suggestion from 
within. 1 Accordingly when we dream, waking or 

1 From without also, so far as the condition remains responsive 
to objective stimuli. This is ordinarily most limited in revery or 
sleep, but is marked in hypnotic states. The suggestibility is a 
distinctive trait, whether exhibited towards one set of influences 
or towards another. 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 179 

sleeping, we throw the reins to the natural motives 
of our mental progress, settle back upon our inner 
resources, lose the orientation in real time and 
space and condition, and passively receive the 
issues of our spontaneous musings. In sympathy 
with this attitude, this more natural and more 
primitive type of consciousness, with the mind 
thus eased to the abandon of leisure and neglige, 
dreams develop, transforming familiar, or it may 
be neglected material into constructions of pro- 
nounced style, the genius whereof we must now 
seek to portray. 

The most conspicuous trait of the dream-move- 
ment we commonly describe by calling it fanciful, 
fantastic, the issue of a vivid imagination, — an 
unbridled imagination, as the phrase has it in 
apt simile ; for it is not the mere exercise of the 
imagination, of which there is plenty in waking 
thought, but of a fancy-free, unrestrained use of 
it, following any trail or none. The bond of 
sequences is to the logical standard a strange 
one, uniting by a system of curious, astrology-like 
correspondences the seemingly unrelated details 
of diverse realms, and making of the whole a 
blind or suggestive medley of sense and nonsense : 
all this with a gay variety that emphasizes, now 
the sensible, and again the nonsensical, now the 
obvious, commonplace sequences, and again the 
weird, bizarre ones, with much traceable allegiance 



180 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

to waking experience, and still more to the indi- 
vidual endowment of the dreamer. 

If this be adequate to recall the occasions, the 
affiliations, and the spirit of dream-consciousness, 
we may proceed to unfold its relations to waking 
thought, and to the central theme of subconscious 
participation. The same step has already been 
taken from the converse side. To appreciate the 
flighty, imaginative factor in waking thought, we 
drew upon the analogy of dreams ; to secure 
an impression of the gait of the imagination in 
dreaming, we now proceed to trace its similar 
steps in normal progress. It would nicely meet 
the psychologist's needs, if it were possible to 
take a record of the train of ideas as the waking 
consciousness is slowing down to a standstill, 
continuing its natural advance by its own mo- 
mentum. This is difficult, because, when pro- 
ceeding with the logic-master at the throttle, the 
train moves along definite tracks, though with 
frequent and unforeseen switchings, while the 
slowing down is really, in some measure, the aban- 
donment of enforced highways and the transfor- 
mation of the whole into some other though 
kindred locomotion. Mr. Galton has recorded 
such a personal essay by allowing "the mind to 
play freely for a very brief period, until a couple 
or so of ideas have passed through it, and then, 
while the traces or echoes of those ideas are still 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 181 

lingering in the brain, to turn the attention upon 
them with a sudden and complete awakening." 
It cannot be supposed that by this ruse we shall 
secure a replica of the natural drift of dream- 
thought ; but if the effort to keep the hands off 
the mental operation has been moderately suc- 
cessful, we are likely to find an intermediate form 
of product with some decided approach to the 
characteristics of the dream-current. Mr. Galton 
walked along Pall Mall, leisurely scrutinizing 
whatever caught his attention, awaiting a sugges- 
tion or two that might be thus aroused ; or he set 
his thoughts going by contemplating a selected 
word or phrase, — all this as unrestrainedly as 
possible. It appeared that a large part of these 
freely launched thought-sequences floated along 
on a current of visual imagery. Another consider- 
able portion revealed the histrionic or dramatic 
talent at work, — " cases in which I either act a 
part in imagination, or see in imagination a part 
acted, or, most commonly by far, where I am both 
spectator and all the actors at once in an ima- 
ginary mental theatre." At times the tableaux 
gave way momentarily to the verbal suggestiveness 
of the formulated thought ; and now and then 
abstract notions attracted the mind, not infre- 
quently inducing a puzzling association-blank, to 
be bridged only by a more concentrated effort. 
When traced to their source in experience, a con- 



182 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

siderable share of the associations dated from 
images formed in youth, and brought to light 
half-forgotten incidents. What is interesting is 
that each one of these traits is eminently charac- 
teristic of the associations of dreams. Obviously, 
this momentary resurrection of evanescent images 
that still have one foot in the waking world is not 
dreaming ; yet the same types of progress that 
furnish the tempo for the movement of dreams 
are easily recognizable herein. 

Idler, less purposive, yet waking reveries, ap- 
proaching more nearly to the remoteness of dreams 
from the genius of the work-a-day world, we have 
least favorable opportunity to set to words. Such 
musings partake of the evanescent, non-luminous 
attention, the indefinite fixation of sleeping dreams, 
but lack their frequent pictorial vividness and self- 
sufficiency. They no longer so readily qualify 
for reinstatement in waking memory, and have 
not yet acquired the privileges of the transferred 
allegiance. It is naturally a delicate task to find 
recordable instances of revery that is not too 
restrained by the genius of waking thought, or 
of dreaming that has sufficiently shaken off the 
deeper incapacity of the mind's inertia ; yet it 
seems plausible to expect that the half-aroused 
mental movement, before it gets its waking pace, 
will exhibit much the same inclination to a dream- 
like handling of a theme set by an actual environ- 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 183 

ment, as is encountered in the slowing down of 
our normal progress, when the wind fails and we 
begin to drift with the tide. The light effects of 
dawn and twilight have something in common ; 
the landscape is comparably transformed in the 
gathering and in the lifting mist. When we 
awaken somewhat gradually from a deep slumber, 
or regain consciousness easily after a momentary 
oblivion, we may be able to fix, before they fade, 
the playful measures of the mind's truant occu- 
pations. 

As apposite instances I can offer nothing more 
satisfactory than these two : In the first experience 
the narrator, in the languor following the awaken- 
ing from a nap, indulged in a passively uncritical 
train of association. His eyes rested upon the out- 
lines of the window-panes, which presented a series 
of oblongs with the long side horizontal ; he ap- 
preciated that the panes were really higher than 
broad, and that the effect was due to the crossing 
of the bars of the one sash with those of the other; 
reflected that the effect was pleasing, that he had 
seen it in old houses and in new ones built on old 
models ; then visualized a window containing these 
broad panes ; then thought how easily, in order- 
ing window-panes of such shape, a carpenter 
might make a mistake and set them with the long 
side vertical instead of horizontal ; speculated 
whether such an error would require the job to 
be done over again ; then visualized a fireplace 
showing the color and design and setting, in a 
house which he had built fourteen years before, 



184 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

in which the faulty drawing of the architect had 
resulted in a badly proportioned opening, an irre- 
parable mistake ; then visualized the face of the 
culprit architect ; and at this stage entered a wide- 
awake condition, wondering why this face should 
be present, — and was just able to resurrect by a 
reverse memory the aforesaid series of uncon- 
trolled yet logical subconscious associations. An- 
other contributor emerges from a " brown study," 
vaguely aware of a misty medley of flitting faces, 
is able to revitalize but one of them, which, much 
to his surprise, proves to be his own reflection as 
he sees it in his glass while shaving ; and is able to 
trace the appearance (a probable but not demon- 
strable source for others of the faces as well) to 
the series of illustrations scattered among the ad- 
vertisements in a popular magazine which he had 
been perusing, — one of them, on the open page 
before him, setting forth the excellence of a cer- 
tain make of soap by picturing the foamy lather 
on the shaven cheek. Doubtless, we all meet with 
such unexpected sequences in listless reflection, 
of which we recall only the more striking and ac- 
countable. Towards the great majority of these 
we do not, and could not if we would, assume a 
successful introspective attitude ; they are far too 
elusive to be caught in the resurrecting process 
that attempts to draw them from their submerged 
retreat. 

From the quality of the intent reveries, which 
we considered in appraising the measure of dream- 
fancy in discursive thought, we may readily anti- 
cipate its more pronounced, more extravagant 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 185 

expressions in playful musings. The consistency 
of the series, from the released tension of logical 
guidance to the freest wanderings of an irresponsi- 
ble fancy, is indeed well maintained. We might 
next look to the momentary oblivion of an in- 
stant's loss of consciousness as a presumably 
favorable device promptly to set the dream-con- 
struction to work upon the material of the waking 
occupation. Concretely, we may enter upon a 
" cat-nap " with some charge upon the mind, some 
definite engagement ; and then, if we dream, we 
contemplate the transformation of our concern 
through characteristic dream-imagery. Of this I 
have an apt illustration : — 

A mother, at the bedside of her child convales- 
cent from an infectious fever, had been singing 
the latter to sleep ; and for a moment she, too, fell 
asleep. From time to time she had been reading, 
and for weeks her literature had been confined 
to paper-covered novels, magazines, and news- 
papers, which, to avoid infection, were promptly 
consigned to the flames. Her dream-reasoning 
took up the theme thus : " What a pity ! I have 
just sung my favorite song ; and now it must be 
burned up, and I can never sing it again," — a con- 
cordant bit of reasoning applied to curiously inap- 
propriate premises, a type of incongruity to which 
dream-logic is notably indifferent. 1 A more intri- 

1 In " cat-naps " one may quite as often drift far afield from 
the moment's occupation. The revery into which we fall when we 
stare with vacant eyes at the unread page before us often finds 



186 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

cate confusion of real moves upon a fictitious board 
appears in the dream of the medical student, whose 
duties required his presence at the hospital at 
an unattractively early hour of the morning. He 
responded to his landlady's summons to awake, 
realized his obligations, but realized more immedi- 
ately the attractions of inertia and dreamland. In 
his dream he saw the hospital-ward with himself 
on a cot, and the usual card at the bedside, giving 
the name and the data of the " case." His dream- 
consciousness, thus reporting that his person had 
already been transferred to the hospital, plausibly 
argues that there is no need for arousing himself 
to go there, and offers the assurance that he may 
comfortably continue to sleep, — which he does 
until a succeeding moment of wakefulness dispels 
the pleasant dream-delusion. 

A comparable incident, involving a similar play- 
ing in and out of the sleeping world, is that of a 
student who impressed upon her mind the neces- 

us browsing in quite distant pastures. Much depends upon the 
condition in which revery overtakes us ; whether we take a quick 
excursion with tbe seven-leagued boots of fancy to a castle in 
Spain, or whether we fall back with modest innovation upon some 
reverberating undercurrent of spent occupation. Instances of 
the former the reader will supply ; for the latter a brief incident 
may be cited : A young man falls asleep with head upon hand, 
and wakes promptly with a vivid dream-picture, in which he 
appears in the act of throwing a stone over a windmill. Just be- 
fore settling down to his reading he had actually been throwing a 
ball high in the air, and while throwing it had wondered whether 
he threw it as high as he had the previous summer at his home, 
when he threw a ball over a windmill, — the dream-picture thus 
undisturbedly reinstating in a life-like tableau the fading reflec- 
tion of an occupied mind. 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 187 

sity of awaking at half-past seven o'clock. She 
awoke at the noise of the factory-whistles that 
are sounded at seven o'clock, and settled back to 
a short sleep. The dream begins with an impres- 
sion that she asks her room-mate the time, and 
receives the answer, " Twenty minutes before 
eight;" then, that she arises and dresses and goes 
down to breakfast, where all proceeds regularly, 
except that the dishes are displayed upon a buffet, 
from which each selects whatever is wanted. 
Breakfast over, she consults her watch, finds it to 
be only seven o'clock, and takes her room-mate to 
task for having misinformed her as to the hour. 
The latter denies having given any information 
on the subject ; and in seeking to harmonize these 
conflicting testimonies, the sleeper awakes to find 
that in the waking world it is just half-past 
seven o'clock. It would thus appear that the 
subconscious guidance, to which we intrust our 
responsibilities when we turn over for the coveted 
half-hour more, took this roundabout method of 
awakening the sleeper, ever holding in mind the 
charge committed to its care, while indulging in a 
simple variation upon the central theme. 

The transitional status of dreams is wholly con- 
sistent with their frequent occurrence during the 
lightening of slumber, after the brain has been 
for a considerable period plunged in a deeper 
sleep, and the whole organism has become adapted 
to the accompanying abeyance of nervous func- 
tion. This condition influences the manner of 
origin of the dream-material, concerning which we 



188 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

have an inquiring interest. We discover promptly 
that the stuff that dreams are made o£ is of two 
textures, the one of a direct perceptive quality, 
and thereby giving rise to a presentative dream ; 
and the other woven of such of the dominant 
reflective ideas and store of memory-images as are 
available to an unpremeditated summons, — such 
elements, in view of their more elaborated stand- 
ing, being termed representative. Naturally also 
does the typical dream embody an intricate min- 
gling of the two. Yet in certain of our dream- 
ventures we float so constantly upon the sensory 
stream that its course directs the manner of our 
excursion ; while others in turn are conducted 
under such purely intellectual guidance as to 
reflect no discernible motive in actual feeling. 
Whether responsive to a sensory incentive or not, 
the dream-material receives a characteristic trans- 
figuration, in which the dreamer remains igno- 
rant or most vaguely aware of the source of his 
inspiration, viewing his experiences through the 
brilliant transforming medium of the dream-at- 
mosphere. 

It may be readily demonstrated that our senses 
are sufficiently active in sleep to respond in some 
degree to their natural stimuli. In this respect 
they fall into two classes : the one the more ob- 
jective, the world-informing senses, of which sight 
and hearing are the notable exemplars ; and the 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 189 

other the body-informing senses, that bring to 
our consciousness complex and indefinable sensa- 
tions o£ the positions of limbs and muscles, of the 
functioning of the internal economy in ease or 
discomfort. The former, being directive in the 
shaping of our mental imagery, are likely to be 
summoned in the staged processional movements 
of intellectual dreams, while the latter undergo 
curious transmutations, assuming pronounced dis- 
guises in which it is difficult to recognize their 
organic starting-points. Moreover, such senses as 
taste and smell, that in this aspect occupy an 
intermediate position, with difficulty secure repre- 
sentation in either realm, but occasionally appear 
in both. What is notable of the sleeping condi- 
tion is that the outwardly directed senses are 
largely cut off from their stimuli, while the inner 
organic senses not only have functions to serve 
during sleep, but naturally come to the front when 
their powerful rivals are in abeyance. For these 
reasons, the more frequent and more typical pre- 
sentative dreams are founded upon the tactile, 
motor, and organic group of sense-feelings, and 
through this avenue reach the freer elaboration 
of dream-fancy. Yet, though the eye and ear are 
moderately safe from stimulation in secluded sleep, 
and any too violent stimulus thereof is apt to 
induce wakefulness, it at times occurs that some 
visual stimulus — and far more characteristically 



190 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

an auditory one — reaches the sleeper's conscious- 
ness sufficiently to affect his dreams and without 
otherwise disturbing his slumbers. A few instances 
will be sufficient to set forth what these sense- 
determined dreams mainly have to tell for our 
present interest, namely, that this type of dream- 
ing elaborates after its own manner the common- 
place material of the external, and most charac- 
teristically of the inner, bodily excitements; that 
it interprets these typically subconscious messages, 
not with the corrective orientation of the logically 
trained waking mind, but with the fantastic motif 
of spontaneous revery. 

Apart from the organic dreams, of which the 
protean varieties of nightmare following upon 
indigestion are an adequate reminder, some experi- 
mental ventures have indicated that by tickling a 
sleeper's nose, one may induce a dream of a mask, 
or of a plaster being applied and torn off ; move 
his right hand, and he dreams of a fight; or draw 
up his leg, and he dreams of walking upstairs ; 
uncover his knees, and he dreams of a diligence- 
ride, in which the traveler's knees are apt to feel 
cold ; snap scissors near his ears, and he dreams 
of the clank of bells ; place eau-de-cologne under 
his nostrils, and he dreams of the perfume of the 
Orient; approach a hot-water bottle to his feet, 
and he dreams of walking over hot lava, or of 
being led by Satan over the burning marl of hell. 
The application of heat to the feet of a patient with 
paralyzed limbs induced a dream of being trans- 
formed into a bear, who was taught to dance by 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 191 

being placed on hot iron plates. The slipping of 
the cover from a hot-water bag applied to the feet 
brought on a more elaborate sequence. The nar- 
rator before going to sleep had read of the cap- 
ture of tourists by Italian brigands ; he dreamed 
of being attacked by two Mexicans in the Rocky 
Mountains, who, after a struggle, captured him, 
and hurried him to their camp situated in a deep 
gorge. Here they threatened tortures unless he 
revealed how copper could be converted into gold, 
and upon his plea of ignorance of such a secret, 
removed his boots and stockings and exposed his 
naked feet to the fire. 

Accidental stimulation of the senses furnishes 
similar plots for dream-scenes. Sight furnishes 
the least of these, yet appears in the dream of fire 
induced by an actual blaze in the neighborhood, 
or by the passage of some one through the bed- 
chamber with a lighted candle. The rustling flap 
and rapid shutting in and out of the light, caused 
by a blowing window-shade, induced a dream of 
lightning and thunder ; while an actual thunder- 
storm was responded to by a vision in which the 
dreamer's head was being placed upon an anvil 
and crushed to the accompaniment of a crashing 
noise and the flight of sparks. One may readily 
illustrate how actual sounds and words, heard, 
it may be, in a half-awake condition, reappear 
in the dream-sequences ; simpler instances are 
common enough, such as the blast of a postil- 
ion's horn inducing the dream of a church chant 
with organ obligato, or the rumble of a passing 
carriage starting off dreams of travel. A more 
elaborate dream in which the material is sup- 
plied mainly through auditory channels, but the 



192 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

dream-fancy operates the loom, is the following, 
narrated by a college girl, who had during the 
afternoon watched with interest the military ma- 
noeuvres of the university battalion. During the 
night — about one o'clock — a telephone mes- 
sage arrived at the sorority-house, announcing a 
death in the family of one of the members, A. 
The household was at once aroused and excited. 
There were more telephone calls, much walking 
in the halls, a message to the railroad station to 
hold the train if need be — and A. went off. Now 
the narrator was only partially aroused by all this 
commotion, had no distinct knowledge of A.'s 
departure, but had the memory of a vivid dream : 
" I dreamed that I was at the i North Western ' 
station in a large city, and that companies of 
soldiers hurried on to the train. I was very much 
excited, and it seemed to me that some one whom 
I knew well was about to leave. The engine 
whistled and started to move when some one 
called, ' Hold the train for two minutes ; I must 
get home.' " 

Dr. Hammond cites * two pertinent odor-dreams : 
the one a dream of a chemical laboratory, excited 
by the escape of gas in the room; the other of a 
laundry and of a woman scorching a blanket with 
too hot an iron, excited by the odor of burning 
cloth. 

The more elaborate presentative dreams are 
likely to be associated with longer enduring and 

1 Sleep and its Derangements (1873), p. 133. There is also re- 
printed (p. 131) a most elaborate and distressing, almost morbid, 
delirious dream carried on by one who was compelled to pass the 
night in the close, odoriferous house of a cheesemonger. 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 193 

summating excitements, of which the following 
are sufficiently typical. They involve in each case, 
in addition, a various range of representative ele- 
ments that have their source in the endowment 
and experiences of the individual. Owing to the 
crowding at a village hotel, a traveler shared his 
bed with a strange bedfellow. He was somewhat 
concerned for the safety of his valuables, and 
dreamed of robbers who were choking him, when 
he awoke gasping ; for the pillow-sham, held by 
a rod above his head, had fallen over his face. 
A student dreamed that he was called up in Pro- 
fessor F.'s class in Dramatic Reading, but as he 
responded, found greater and greater effort in 
seeing the text, being forced at last to tell the 
professor that he could not read. He awoke to 
find a burning pain in his eyes, the beginning of 
a temporary trouble. 

The following dream is notable by reason of 
the minute accountability of each of the several 
factors ; and the one succeeding it is similarly 
suggestive. In the one dream, the left ear had 
somehow become a source of annoyance and pain ; 
so the patient found relief by the drastic method 
of cutting off the offending member with a razor. 
Here was a serious plight ! As a teacher, this dis- 
figurement would detract from his proper appear- 
ance in the schoolroom. He accordingly tele- 
phoned to Dr. A., who replied that he could not 
come in person, but would send a physician who 
happened to be visiting him. The latter presently 
appeared, a tall, unknown German, an expert in 
such operations, who replaced the ear; and as 
the patient felt the blood coursing through the 
resurrected organ, he awoke to find his actual ear 



194 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

doubled up under his head. The incidents of the 
dream-action are unusually well accounted for. To 
begin with, the scene was set, not at the dream- 
er's actual home, but in Kansas, — and this be- 
cause of the arrival during the day of a letter 
from his brother living in Kansas. The narrator's 
mind was ruminating upon operations, because 
he had that afternoon attended an operation per- 
formed upon his small son. Dr. A. was sent for 
as a personal friend and former physician, and 
the fact that he lived in far-off Montana excited 
no sense of inconsistency that could not be met 
by a summons by telephone ; likewise was it the 
fact, that this doctor had recently taken a partner, 
in appearance unknown to the narrator. Also is 
account taken of the dreamer's actual profession ; 
while the razor, to one who shaves, may natu- 
rally be summoned to do duty as a surgical in- 
strument. 

The second dream is recounted by a young lady 
who had placed aloes upon her thumb to break 
the childhood habit of thumb-sucking in sleep. 
"During the night, however, she dreamed that 
she was crossing the ocean in a steamer made of 
wormwood, and that the vessel was furnished 
throughout with the same material. The plates, 
the dishes, tumblers, chairs, tables, etc., were all 
of wormwood, and the emanations so pervaded 
all parts of the ship that it was impossible to 
breathe without tasting the bitterness. Every- 
thing that she ate or drank was likewise, from 
being in contact with wormwood, so impregnated 
with the flavor that the taste was overpower- 
ing. When she arrived at Havre she asked for a 
glass of water to wash the taste from her mouth, 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 195 

but they brought her an infusion of wormwood, 
which she gulped down because she was thirsty, 
though the sight of it excited nausea. She went 
to Paris and consulted a famous physician, M. 
Sauve Moi, begging him to do something which 
would extract the wormwood from her body. He 
told her that there was but one remedy, and that 
was oxgall. This he gave her by the pound, and 
in a few weeks the wormwood was all gone, but 
the oxgall had taken its place, and was fully as 
bitter and disagreeable. To get rid of the oxgall, 
she was advised to take counsel of the Pope. She 
accordingly went to Rome and obtained an audi- 
ence of the Holy Father. He told her that she 
must make a pilgrimage to the plain where the 
pillar of salt stood, into which Lot's wife was 
transformed, and must eat a piece of the salt as 
big as her thumb. During the journey in search 
of the pillar of salt she endured a great many suf- 
ferings, but finally triumphed over all obstacles. 
. . . After a good deal of deliberation she rea- 
soned that, as she had a very bad habit of sucking 
her thumb, it would be very philosophical to break 
off this part from the statue, and thus not only 
get cured of the bitterness in her mouth, but also 
of her failing. She did so, put the piece of salt 
into her mouth, and awoke to find that she was 
sucking her own thumb." — Hammond. 

In all these suggestive assimilations, the inter- 
pretation embroiders the tale occasionally with 
but a simple pattern, a quite close variant of the 
real sensation, yet as frequently separated there- 
from by distant spans of fantastic associations. 



196 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The possibilities o£ dream-construction seem thus 
endless ; and we might have hours of such mental 
rhapsody, and, in conformity therewith, a measur- 
ably different human psychology to prepare, were 
it not that nature does not cultivate, at least in 
its normal arrangements, such enduring reveries, 
such half -lulled musings of the mind; and perhaps 
equally, that the mind does not easily retain for 
minute rehearsal in waking periods an ample 
record of its capricious journeys. 

Yet for the larger range of dream-content must 
we be willing to accept an account of its affili- 
ations with consciously assimilated experiences, 
in far vaguer, more uncertain terms ; and this 
partly because dreams speak in parables that are 
weak in meaning to the waking understanding, 
partly because of the complexity and intricate 
variety of the mind's affairs, which bring it about 
that the proportion of those definitely traceable to 
the potential resources of the mind bears about 
the same relation as does the drawing power of a 
single depositor to the treasury of the bank in 
which he holds an account. It is mainly to have 
fresh in mind the manner of negotiation in the 
business of dreams, of these drafts upon the com- 
mon mental bank, that a few concrete accounts 
are offered for inspection, the chief quality of 
which is their freedom from any exceptional fea- 
tures. They may be regarded as circulating at par 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 197 

value, and might equally well be replaced, as the 
reader is encouraged to replace them, by others 
from his personal account. 

For related reasons, I give in part narratives 
from my own experience, in which an attention to 
the correctness of perspective in the rendering 
and a prompt record of the incidents lend addi- 
tional realism. I may preface that I am not a 
proficient dreamer, frequently find upon awaken- 
ing only the disjecta membra of a forgotten 
dream, and am unpleasantly and familiarly ac- 
quainted with nightmares of mild or distressing 
type. The dream was this : The hour was late at 
night ; I was sitting at my desk in my study, 
writing by the light of my reading-lamp. The 
light suddenly illuminated a hallway and stair- 
landing, which in retrospect I recognized to be 
the hall of the house in which I had spent the 
previous evening. On the landing appeared a 
maid in black dress and starched white apron, 
who — so I reasoned in my dream — had found 
no other place to sleep than on the stair-landing, 
and who, I feared, would, on seeing me, become 
frightened, give the alarm, and arouse the house- 
hold. My attempt to divert this denouement at 
once merged into an effort to arouse myself, which 
was practically a mild nightmare, from which I 
awoke with distressing sensations and the words, 
" Wake me," spoken with great effort, still audi- 
ble on my lips. That is all of the dream ; nothing 
much worth telling, nothing that I should have 
remembered to tell, had I not made a special effort 
to do so ; just a sequence of pictures, — and that, 
I take it, is what most of one's average dreams 



198 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

are. I was also able to recall, as a sort of prologue 
to this dream, something that remained vague in 
my memory, yet seemed in a measure connected 
with the other. I found myself running out of 
the garden of a friend, — this again at dead of 
night, — reflecting as I ran that it was a foolish 
thing to do, as I incurred the risk of being shot 
at in running. That isolated picture was all that 
I could recall of this dream episode. Now as to 
the sources of the dream : All the elements of 
both dream-pictures are to be found in the hap- 
penings of the preceding twenty-four hours, — a 
common dream trait. I had dined the evening 
before with a company of men. The scene of the 
stair-landing and the appearance of the maid are 
transferred directly from the home of my host. 
Most of the men were members of the Faculty of 
the University ; and I had spent a part of the day 
in writing a document concerning the business of 
the Faculty. I went to sleep with the conscious- 
ness that the hour was late ; and the nightmare 
presents the familiar relation to the indulgence in 
a heartier dinner than usual. The sub-dream or 
fragment was set in the garden of another member 
of the company, who was concerned in the docu- 
ment which I dreamed I was writing. 

The episodes have something to do with one 
another ; yet the commingling is unexpected, and 
much consideration is had of the dramatic element. 
The motive of the dream lies in part close to the 
dreamer's real occupations and interests ; but the 
dream-pictures are as clear for the incidental 
impressions as for any other; and, admitting some 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 199 

measure of irrelevancy and the mock reasoning 
of the dream-consciousness, the whole becomes 
about as rational and explicable a part of the 
currents of his thought as would be most of his 
untrammeled or casually directed musings. 1 

There are further factors in the dream-move- 
ment, some fundamental and others secondary 
to our central purpose. They merit incidental 
recognition, particularly as they may be noticed 
in connection with a very dominant trait of 
dreams, namely, their continuation or resuscita- 
tion of prominent waking activities, — a factor 
conspicuous in the dream just cited. Let us begin 
with the motor type. To dream of doing that 
which you have been doing, and perhaps persist- 
ently doing, seems natural enough ; this is indeed 
a process easy of expression in nervous functions. 
In its lowest form, it may be little more than the 
persistence of irritation of the excited centres. 
For muscular activity the local after-feelings in 
the strenuously exercised muscles form a sufficient 
starting-point that the dream-consciousness readily 
builds upon, while the fatigue after-effects of long 
stimulated sense-organs offer an equally direct 
dream-mo tif. 

1 I must also ask the reader at this stage to read again, with 
his attention directed to the relations just presented in the refer- 
ence of my own dream to its origins in experience, the dreams 
recorded for a related pertinence on the preceding pages, and 
also pages 70-73 and 90-92. 



200 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The following account of the persistence of 
motor sensations during the first night on land 
after a fortnight upon a rough sea tells the tale 
adequately: " As long as I lay on the bed with 
my eyes open, everything was normal ; but as 
soon as I closed my eyes, I could feel the bed 
rock higher and higher, and then, just as my 
mind was becoming a blank, the foot of the bed 
would seem to rise up, and the whole bed would 
whirl around ; this, of course, would awaken me. 
Time and time again this happened, until finally 
I went to sleep. The dream that followed was 
that I was in a basket on the end of a spring or 
some flexible material, and that I was being 
swung high in the air. Then, as I was on the 
downward journey, a great black ball or cloud 
seemed to come and meet the basket and to strike 
it a terrible blow. At this point I awoke and 
found myself on the floor." 

This incident contains all four of the factors 
that may variously enter into these combined pre- 
sentative and representative or reflective dreams. 
First, the sensations or mental occupations are 
present as an undercurrent, and may be detected 
as engaging the waking consciousness by merely 
shutting out the rival sense-stimuli or rival trains 
of thought (by closing the eyes and directing the 
attention inward, the " sea " movement becomes 
apparent) ; second, the sensations are experienced 
in the direct sensory terms of dream-consciousness 
(the dreamer feels the motion, lives the experi- 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 201 

ence) ; third, there is an actual reaction (the sleeper 
tumbles out of bed) ; and fourth, the sensation gets 
itself woven into a plot or sequence, in this case 
a slight variation only, as the sensory undercur- 
rent is so persistent. The first point, when gener- 
alized, illustrates how the waking consciousness on 
going to sleep may, by suitable attention, become 
vaguely or definitely aware of the undercurrent 
of thought or sensation that presently is to reap- 
pear in dreaming. Indeed, the mechanism thereof 
is similar to that by which a charge of some 
mental errand is made upon the sleeping con- 
sciousness. The second summarizes the group of 
cases, in which, after some strenuous or unusual 
occupation, such as playing ball, or rolling stones, 
or cutting hay, or making paper flowers (these 
are actual instances), the dreamer continues these 
activities in dreams, possibly merely as a witness, 
and possibly making them the starting-points of 
other dream-episodes, but in which the dreamer 
remains passively asleep. In the third group, the 
motor activities are carried to execution, and we 
have somnambulism, and as a specially interesting 
variety, somniloquy ; and we might further gen- 
eralize the sprawling, singing, riding, fishing, 
jumping, shouting, getting up and doing things 
that ensues as the issue of such dreams by group- 
ing them together as " action " dreams. The per- 
sistence of occupation may thus stimulate the mus- 



202 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

cles and the mind to dream-performance ; in con- 
sequence of an activity prominent, in fact, still 
vibrant, in the recent occupation (though, it may 
be, for other cause), the sleeper becomes a dream- 
actor and carries out the part in a trance-like 
state. Or if he be less excitable, as most of us 
are, he merely dreams of himself in the part of his 
dream-allotment, exhibiting, in a slight measure, 
to a chance witness, some of the motor accompa- 
niments of the supposed deed. Transferred to the 
intellectual field, we have all varieties of problems 
solved, intellectual doubts removed, and again 
with or without motor accompaniment. The 
whereabouts of a lost article may be made clear 
in a dream-picture, or the dreamer may get up 
and find it ; the lost quotation or the missing for- 
mula may appear to the dream-consciousness, or 
it may be spoken or written. The fourth factor 
lays emphasis upon the fact that all these proced- 
ures are likely to be decidedly transfigured in the 
dream-solution, and that indeed this dream-compo- 
sition, especially in the intellectual associative field, 
is the life and soul of dreaming, the other factors 
perchance diminishing to a vanishing-point, and 
the unaccountable, creative, imaginative energy 
becoming responsible for all that is notable in the 
elaborated product. 

It will be sufficient, in order to give that desir- 
able sense of concrete realism to the exposition, to 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 203 

select a small group of dreams, all of them of 
simple, ordinary type, and leave it to the reader 
to make the interpretations in conformity with 
the analyses just enforced. First I present a group 
of three dreams, all embodying motor elements 
derived from recent occupation, and either persist- 
ing by their vigor through the sleeping state, or 
charged as a care upon the sleeping as well as 
upon the waking mind. A. had been practicing for 
the broad jump in preparation for an approach- 
ing contest, in which he was absorbingly inter- 
ested. His dream, that came promptly upon 
falling asleep, disclosed a detailed picture of the 
contest, with his competitors limbering up and 
jumping as their numbers were called, and finally 
his response to the call of his own number. In- 
stantly he was off in the air with his knees doubled 
under his chin, landed fairly, and awoke m a per- 
spiration, with tense muscles ; and presently real- 
ized that it was only a dream-jump. Equally 
pertinent is the case of B., who, without awaken- 
ing, was observed by his room-mate to go through 
violent movements with his legs, under the bed- 
clothes ; and when asked to account for this the 
next morning, he was able to recall a dream in 
which he was riding a bicycle, and eager to over- 
take another rider constantly in his lead. C. had 
been working all day long in harvesting hay. 
The hay was hoisted by large forks and tackle, 
and when shifted to where it was wanted, was 
dropped into place ; it required caution on the 
part of the workers to keep clear of the huge 
masses of hay. " A great forkful of hay was sus- 
pended above me on the point of being dropped, 
when I suddenly sank to the waist in an unno- 



204 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ticed crevice. In vain I struggled to extricate 
myself to avoid being covered up. Down came 
the mass, landing about two feet in front of me. 
But I was not to escape so easily, for my comrade 
on the other side was straining every nerve to 
push the mass over to make way for the next one. 
He had not seen me, and was pushing the hay 
right upon me. In sheer desperation I pushed 
against the mass and shouted so lustily that I 
awoke to find myself sitting bolt upright and 
pushing against the adjacent wall with both 
hands." This dream, it may be added, like the 
former, came promptly upon going to sleep. 

When the dream-acting is more than incidental, 
more than the mere final issue of a dream itself 
conducted in passive terms, it becomes full-fledged 
somnambulism, which, like the active dreams just 
cited, may contain a single scene or a dramatic 
sequence. Quite typical of the intrusion of the 
dominant worry or thought is the case of D., 
a Freshman, considerably alarmed by the danger 
of hazing, who dreams that the Sophomores have 
captured him and locked him in a room to await 
his fate. Seeking a way of escape, he observes a 
door, the upper portion of which is of glass, and 
strikes it with his fist. This awakes not only him- 
self but his room-mate ; and investigation reveals 
a broken window-pane as the issue of the dream. 
E., a father, excited by an account of the kidnap- 
ing of a child, arises at night, goes to the cot of 
his little boy, places him on the floor, tumbles the 
bed-clothes over him, expresses satisfaction at hav- 
ing saved the boy from the pursuing kidnapers, 
and is with difficulty awakened and made to real- 
ize that he is responsible for the disordered room. 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 205 

F. awoke suddenly on a cold winter night to find 
herself in an upstairs hall, with a heavy cloak 
over her shoulders. Under the stimulus of the 
cold, she had arisen in her sleep, and walked down- 
stairs through other rooms into the hall where 
hung her cloak; this she had put on, and was 
returning to her room, when she stumbled against 
a stepladder left there by workmen, and by this 
encounter was made to realize her condition. The 
somnambulistic consciousness took account of the 
accustomed obstacles, as one ordinarily finds his 
way in the dark in a familiar room, but was 
unable to adjust itself to the unusual intrusion. 
As a typical instance of an " action " dream pur- 
suant to an emphatic charge upon the memory, I 
have the case of G., a young woman left in charge 
of the household during her mother's absence. 
Owing to the preparation of a late supper and 
the interruption of visitors, she was engaged as 
late as ten o'clock in washing dishes and in lay- 
ing the table for breakfast. In the middle of the 
night, she was found by her father rewashing 
these same dishes in her sleep ; and, in reply to 
his questioning, she urged that she wished her 
mother to find all in order upon her return. The 
next morning she retained no memory of her 
dream-activity. 

Dreams that arouse the speech or writing me- 
chanisms to action have psychologically the same 
status as those just considered, but are naturally 
the issue of more reflective, rationalized interests ; 
yet they may be, as in the first of the next two 
instances, a merely vocal, or as in the second, a 
spoken expression of a contemplated action. H., 
for some reason that she could not recall, began 



206 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

to sing in her sleep, clearly and expressively, and 
thus aroused her room-mate. The latter was suffi- 
ciently interested to start a familiar song, and 
found that the sleeping vocalist continued the 
suggested aria. I., on one occasion, awoke her 
room-mate by requesting the latter to get up and 
light the lamp. As I. was known to be subject to 
talking in her sleep, no attention was paid to the 
request. The somniloquist seemed to be irritated 
by this, and saying, " Well, if you will not light 
it, I will do it myself," actually arose, struck 
a match, lighted the lamp, properly replaced the 
chimney, and returned to sleep, quite unconscious 
of the whole incident. 

The remaining illustrations of dream-progres- 
sion may be conveniently grouped about such as 
consider a problem, or undertake some concern of 
the mind, all in the characteristic dream-manner ; 
those that embody a similar fear or apprehension 
or worry, in which, however, no constructive oper- 
ation, no solution is involved ; and finally, those 
that diverge still further from any purpose, and 
present merely the mind's interests, or its playful, 
fanciful occupations, which last as first represent 
the typical quality of a dream-experience. The 
instance of G. might equally be cited in the pre- 
sent connection as the active persistence of a 
duty already performed. The accounts of solu- 
tion in dreams of more intellectual problems, as a 
rule, conform to a few types, yet bring with them 
so little comprehension of the rationale of their 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 207 

solution, that it is quite as profitable to cite them 
in outline as in detail. They afford disappointing 
and fragmentary glimpses of the dream-method 
of attack ; they present, at times dramatically, and 
at times quite prosaically, the perplexing knot un- 
tied, but regrettably little of the actual process of 
unraveling. Among students, mathematical, and 
especially visually conceived geometrical or alge- 
braic problems are solved in dreams, — sometimes 
with the setting of the recitation-room, the sum- 
mons of the instructor, the actual chalk and 
blackboard, sometimes in mysterious revelation, 
and sometimes in verbal formulae. The baffling 
portions of a model or mechanical device are seen 
in operation, or the whereabouts of a lost article 
appears in its appropriate setting; anticipated 
examinations are rehearsed, and imaginary but 
pertinent questions set and answered ; missing 
quotations are referred to their proper source ; 
forgotten lines to complete a stanza are recalled ; 
arguments to defend an actual position are passed 
in review. In rarer cases such rational pro- 
cedures find their way to utterance, the dreamer 
mumbling or speaking the words that express the 
onward movement of his thought ; and in the 
rarest of cases the sleeper arises and records 
them. So various are these operations that it is 
safe to say that they include the entire range of 
psychological processes that enter into constructive 



208 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

thought ; and likewise do they retain analogy to 
the intrinsic relations and modes of procedure 
that characterize them when performed with nor- 
mal waking attention. 1 

From this point onward, dreams expand into 
such variable, such apparently capricious and 
fanciful creations, that one can do little more 
than present an arbitrary selection, in which are 
embodied pertinent illustrations of dream-con- 
struction. 

J., a conscientious student, to whom his stud- 
ies are burdensome, was intensely eager to attend 
a performance of the " Merchant of Venice." 
Though he prepared his tasks in advance, he was 
much troubled to find that he made a poor show- 
ing in his classwork upon the following day. 
Immediately upon going to sleep at night, he was 
confronted in his dreams by his instructors, who 
each demanded that J. prepare his particular 
study, regardless of the others. An argument 
ensued, in which J. insisted that he could do 
no more, while the instructors enforced their 
demands; finally Mr. X., one of the largest men 
in the University Faculty, in the precise manner 
of Shylock, drew out a huge knife and began 

1 As this type of dream-construction approaches most nearly 
to that of waking directive thought, I have cited the most com- 
prehensive instances in connection with the mechanism of nor- 
mal thinking. I refer again to the dreams cited on page 90, and 
refer also to a dream of the same type (Hammond: Sleep and 
its Derangements, p. 116), in which the existence and location 
of an important legal document are revealed in a dream by the 
ghost of the dreamer's father. 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 209 

to whet it upon his boot. This dramatic threat 
abruptly terminated the dream. 

This is K.'s dream : He was in the room of a 
house in which a corpse was exposed, the presence 
whereof induced an uneasy feeling. In trying to 
escape, he was met by an elderly woman, who 
closed the door and forced him to sit on a chair 
in the dreaded apartment. After a long period 
the lady reappeared with a small box in her hand, 
saying, " Please give me something to help bury 
my poor husband." At this moment there was a 
rustling sound, and the dead man was observed to 
sit up in his coffin, while K. and the lady began a 
conversation with him. This is K.'s explanation : 
He had been reading in the paper of the burying 
alive of a man supposed to be dead ; and with this 
notion incidentally present in his thoughts, it 
chanced that he was asked that evening by a lady 
to contribute to a missionary fund. The merging 
of these two incidents sufficiently supplies the 
dream-elements. 

L.'s dream is typical in its absence of consecu- 
tive or purposive movement, reflecting only the 
shifting pictures of a slumbering yet excitable 
brain. The scene opened in the school-yard of 
his native village. Pole-vaulting was going on, 
and naturally he was the champion, jumping a 
distance which, although it did not appear to be 
over fifteen feet, he somehow knew to be forty 
feet. Other boys were standing about, but silent 
and vague as lay figures, while he occupied the 
centre of the stage. This occupation seemed to 
merge with a metaphysical query concerning au- 
tomatism, the result of which was to establish the 
impression that if L. could make facial grimaces 



210 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

while jumping, he would prove that he was not 
an automaton. At about this juncture the former 
scene faded away, and a new one, not definitely 
located, appeared, in which C, a boy friend, was 
present and the two were playing ball. The ball 
turned into peanuts, which were rolled across the 
field, the field becoming smaller and the peanuts 
larger. On leaving this field, L. came to a corner 
at which a building loomed up dark and sombre; 
and he found himself eating candy with another 
boy friend. The candy was definitely seen as put 
up in little packages within a larger bag ; and he 
was made aware, though he could not tell how, 
that the purpose of the wrapping was to keep the 
candy clean or prevent it from being returned to 
the maker. Again a vague shifting of the scene ; 
and L. was left alone, feeling forlorn and anxious. 
But presently all was transferred to still another 
scene, in which L. and his mother were in the 
village store to purchase some fleece-lined under- 
wear. The price demanded was one dollar, and 
L. was about to interpose objections to the charge, 
but was restrained by his economic conscience 
urging that any reduction would lower the stand- 
ard of the goods. The mother and the friend, who 
appeared vaguely in this interview, then vanished, 
and L. was now on the other side of the store ; 
but the merchandise was no longer in its proper 
place; and he and his companions were eating 
cheese and crackers, and at the same time discuss- 
ing socialism. This doctrine the carpenter of the 
town, in reality a grossly ignorant man, defended. 
L. urged more compromising measures, dwelt upon 
the value of the English aristocracy, and then 
became aware of the presence of Mr. M., a stu- 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 211 

dent of social problems ; and with this the dream 
or series of dreams dissolved. It need only be 
added that the narrator of this dream-sequence is 
a close student of philosophy, is decidedly inter- 
ested in social problems, and had recently been 
reading Morris and Ruskin ; while the recurrent 
eating incidents were referred to an actual attack 
of dyspepsia, and the harking back to the famil- 
iar home scenes presents a natural and frequent 
dream-factor. 

We have thus passed in review the normal char- 
acter of dream-procedure, emphasizing its affilia- 
tions, in source of supply and in the manner of its 
elaboration, to the waking use of allied material. 
Yet the natural history of dreaming requires 
equally that its distinctive traits, the differentia 
of its species as well as its community with the 
genus, shall be discerningly noted. This aspect 
of dream-life has not been overlooked. It may, 
however, be profitable to direct more specific 
attention to such of the contrasts as have closest 
bearing upon the subconscious operations of the 
mind. It has been already noted that the sense- 
factors of dreams are characteristically drawn from 
the type of inner organic sensation, which has a 
feeble and vague representation in consciousness. 
So far, then, as a direct sensory participation influ- 
ences the dream-movement, it is typically derived 
from those sense-forms that have, in the main, 
a subconscious status. This same distinction pre- 



212 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

sents another and a more general contrast. The 
objective type of perception that brings us into 
relation with the world of things furthers a dis- 
tinctly intellectual attitude ; much of our seeing 
and hearing is a direct stimulus to the rational 
powers, and as a consequence leaves a residue of 
clear, systematic, well-defined, strongly inter-re- 
lated memory images, — the preferred data of logi- 
cally constructed thought. The contrasted group 
of sense-perceptions that tells of feeling rather 
than of knowing, of our personal vicissitudes 
rather than of the world without, is likely to 
assume a dominant emotional tone. Their excita- 
tion directly affects the delicate fluctuation of the 
sense of well-being, that obscurely but effectively 
determines mood, temperament, and, in the intel- 
lectual field, the spirit and dominant tone of our 
assimilation. Consistent with this status, we find 
that the emotional value forms a powerfully deter- 
mining factor in the trend, and, it may be, in the 
definite associative threads of dreams. The entire 
contrast of gay and sad, excited and depressed, 
pleasant and painful, effortless and irksome, sets 
the background of the dream-stage, determines 
whether the curtain rises upon comedy or tragedy, 
shapes the dreamer's fate to good fortune or 
despair. So much is this the case that to the emo- 
tional characteristics of dreams has been accorded 
some modest value as corroborative, in a minor 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 213 

phase, of nervous disturbances and mental irrita- 
tions, both within the range of normal health and 
in pronounced mental disease. It is because, as 
has been already set forth in another connection, 
so much of our mental life proceeds in the sub- 
dued tones of hope and longing and suppressed 
desire, of brooding and worry and disaffection, 
that the unrestrained issue even of our intellectual 
contemplations is apt to take its tone from the 
emotional rather than from the logical phases of 
our mental interests. The same analogy that allies 
the musing, castle-building, story-making tend- 
ency of waking reflection to the normal pro- 
cedure of dream-revery also imparts to the latter 
its characteristic emotional dominance. The Last 
zum Fabulieren that is typically an emotionally 
suffused indulgence enters as notably into the 
creations of dream-fancy as into the waking pro- 
ductions of sensitive souls. The content and tone, 
the matter and manner of dreaming, thus are apt 
to take their clue from the subconscious, more in- 
ward, less explicit phases of our nature. For like 
reason does the temperamental variation impress 
itself so strongly upon dream-habits. Sensitive 
or callous, poetic or prosaic, matter-of-fact or 
imaginative, realist or idealist, devotees of fact 
or of fancy, we retain something of our actual 
character when we sojourn in dreamland, — 
a relation variously recognized in many a quota- 



214 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ble dictum, among them the suggestion of Charles 
Lamb that " the degree of the soul's contrivance 
in sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of 
the quantum of poetic faculty resident in the same 
soul waking." The suppressed, unacknowledged 
aspects of our composite temperament find expres- 
sion in dreaming, in summoning to the stage 
the subconscious performers, when the conscious 
players have been dismissed. 

Upon one further phase of the subconscious 
yet reflective procedure in dreams will it be pro- 
fitable to dwell. In one aspect, dreaming is more 
richly imaginative, more fantastically constructive, 
than the waking expression of our thought. This 
superiority is alike complex and misleading. We 
are accustomed to judge the temper and coher- 
ence of our waking thought largely by its success 
in reaching a verbal form ; but in dreams we seem 
to stand face to face with experience, and are not 
removed from the most direct appraisal of its con- 
structive value by the necessity of finding, even 
in part, some toilsome medium for its expression. 
Yet far more largely must we refer the character- 
istic difference to the more abundant access to just 
that form of playful excursion which the utilita- 
rian bent of common thought has eliminated, in 
most of us, from such of the mind's operations 
as we consciously direct. In other words, in the 
stress and strain of training for useful accomplish- 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 215 

ment, we have been required more or less to sup- 
press, to refuse the opportunity of survival to a 
large range of possible mental accomplishments, 
which a different cultural environment, a wholly 
diverse civilization, might have more generously 
cultivated. A complex practical life effectively 
discourages dreaming ; but in the enlarged sense 
all waking life, all active procedure, is practical 
and complex, so that some decided measure of 
contrast must ever obtain between the waking and 
the dreaming assimilation. The contrast centres, 
as we have seen, about the readiness to follow 
any trail that seems inviting, leaving us, how- 
ever, with the inquiry as to why paths, so mean- 
ingless to the alert understanding, should really 
be there to be followed. Our reply must be that 
the one type of combination as much demands 
explanation as the other ; that dreaming is just as 
natural as coherent thinking. We have indeed 
laboriously achieved our rationality, though with 
large natural inclinations thereto, but in so doing 
have by no means lost, though we have in part 
suppressed or sacrificed, the unrestrained devel- 
opment of the same mental powers that equally 
direct our hopes and longings, that lead as legiti- 
mately to revery and to dreams. What we fail 
to realize is that all experience is meaningless 
until we learn to read its message ; that only 
in contrast with the slowly acquired standards of 



216 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

profitable thinking is the dream-procedure pro- 
nounced incoherent. Dreaming is not failure of 
purpose, for the sufficient reason that purpose 
enters so slightly into its concern. 

There would accordingly appear upon the 
dream-stage these two contrasted tendencies of 
our personality ; and each might serve now as 
audience and again as critic to the other. Indeed, 
this interesting detail of dream-procedure has by 
no means been overlooked. In this subtly dual 
part the role has been compared to that of the 
stage-fool, who, in seemingly absurd pleasantry, 
often reveals discerning truths. One must not 
interpret this partitioning of the dream-activity 
too literally. What seemingly occurs is that the 
dreamer is both actor and spectator, both speaker 
and audience. It is as though one phase of our 
personality prepared a surprise for the other, ac- 
complishing this feat by running ahead, and find- 
ing the solution, and bringing it back to be viewed 
by the more sluggish partner with all the inter- 
esting and admiring emotion of a surprise. Mr. 
Greenwood has suggestively portrayed this aspect 
of the dream-play by comparing its procedure 
to what would occur in conscious composition, 
" if Sheridan wondered while he was writing his 
( School for Scandal ' why on earth a screen was 
to be placed on the stage in Act III, and found 
out the purpose with a shock of surprise when he 
caused the screen to fall." 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 217 

This paradoxical sleight-of-mind is clearly re- 
lated to the ignorance on the part of the dream- 
consciousness of the source of its own data, which, 
in turn, results from its out-of-relationship with 
those corrective and regulative perceptions and 
reflections, which the waking, logic-steeped intel- 
ligence has been trained automatically to apply, 
so long as sanity prevails. We must accordingly 
realize that, when we enter dream-land, we should 
be prepared to renounce the entire equipment of 
correlating, unifying, rationalizing, sequence-pre- 
dicting, relation-discerning habits with which we 
conduct the business of our waking concerns ; we 
must recall that such proficiency as we command 
in applying these conceptions is itself not an imme- 
diately given, immanent trait, but has been slowly 
and painfully acquired by the racial and individ- 
ual growth, through interpreted experience and 
constantly corrective observation. Such highly 
developed consummations of our mentality we can 
expect to carry only in small measure upon our 
dream- journeys ; and it behooves us to realize how 
widely different, how unexpectedly capricious, 
how wantonly chaotic may be our adventures, 
when once the strand that holds the beads of 
our experience in consistent sequence is removed. 
Such orientation to natural laws, such practical 
achievement of a modus vivendi with the world 
in which we have to seek a living, extends not 



218 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

merely to the external relations of space and time 
and causal sequence, but it extends equally to the 
mental world, to the unity of personality, the 
underlying sense that makes experiences our own, 
the equally binding antecedents and consequents 
of the mental procedure. In dreaming we re- 
nounce the one as well as the other ; we shift or 
divide our personality as readily as we override the 
limitations of time and space, and tolerate anach- 
ronisms of age or station, of historic setting or 
cultural products. The dreamer " is not disturbed 
because a man in Boston converses with his wife 
in Calcutta ; or a corpse drives itself to the grave, 
instead of being driven there ; or a mosquito as- 
sumes the proportions of an elephant ; or a child 
of five reasons with the wisdom of Solomon." It 
is accordingly consistent with the loss of relation- 
ship to the world of reality that all the complex 
logical acquisitions should in a measure disappear 
at a common stroke. In much the same sense in 
which thinking has been described as repressed 
action may it also be said that logical thinking 
is suppressed dreaming. 1 

1 Much of this fantastic variation is of a rather simple nature, 
in which exaggeration is a marked and constant character. A 
gleam of moonlight becomes an effulgent illumination; a distant 
strain of music, the triumphant flourish and clash of a great army; 
the tingling of a numb arm, the devastating assault of myriads of 
ants. The exaggeration naturally does not remain a crude ampli- 
fication of proportion, but expands into extravagance of concept, 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 219 

Dreaming may thus be viewed as a reversion 
to a more primitive type of thought, the less 
developed procedure being due negatively to the 
loss of voluntary regulation, and positively to the 
imaginative musings and self-contained reveries 
to which the natural movement of the mind domi- 
nantly trends. The absence of the sense of con- 
trol not only brings it about that we accept 
passively what fancy chooses to bring, but that, 
when brought, it comes to us lacking that per- 
sonal stamp of our own efforts that makes us 
take credit for our waking constructions. The 
same simplification relieves us of the duty of 
maintaining a consistent character; and so we 

and all the vagary of hyperbole and anomaly, of the grotesque 
and exotic, the baroque and the bizarre. The perusal of a con- 
siderable collection of ordinary dreams leaves with me the im- 
pression that the average measure of genuine creation or original 
combinations in dreams is readily overestimated. It is, in part, 
because only in dreams does this phase of our talents receive 
notice, and again because of the brilliant vividness of the dream- 
picture, that one is apt to pay a rather exaggerated tribute to the 
superiority of dream-combination. I take this occasion to comment 
again upon the unreality of dreams thus resulting, as judged by 
the standard of our mundane experience, in contrast with the 
intense reality thereof to the dreamer in the dream. Both these 
traits are the consequence of the abandonment of the logical 
standards by which in waking we distinguish between the sub- 
jective and the objective. This release from logical bondage will 
affect similarly, though not equally, minds of varied measure of 
receptivity, of varied station in culture, so that inventions, seem- 
ingly as richly creative as those of fairy tales, may pass before 
the dreaming vision of a quite commonplace mind. 



220 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

witness not alone the transformation of one object 
into a wholly unrelated one, but the attachment 
of our individual characteristics to another per- 
sonality, and the acquisition by our personality of 
traits foreign to our nature ; we indulge as freely 
in a paradoxical psychology as in an impossible 
physics. Dreams conform to no ideals that imply 
obligations as to what is consistent logically, 
what is right morally, or what is commendable 
aesthetically. Such standards and ideals control 
only our sanctioned thinking ; as a reward of per- 
sistent effort has our conduct come to be domi- 
nated by ideals of truth, virtue, and fitness, all 
of them the expression of an enduring volition, 
all of them variously contributive to personal 
character. 

In resume, then, dreaming becomes representa- 
tive of the subconscious form of mental proced- 
ure because the mind is therein dependent upon 
inner resources, is freed from the watchfulness 
of self-observation, takes no heed of the channels 
through which its material is borne, has no world 
of reality to impose upon it the binding regu- 
lations of what is possible, right, or commend- 
able ; has no goal to reach, but only a playful 
purpose to serve ; and so may wander far afield, 
as does the waking mind in the recreation of 
its idle musings. Yet with this dominant temper 
dreams quite as consistently show their allegiance 



DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 221 

to that other form of regulated thought from 
which these contrasts distinguish, but do not 
separate it. An equally important group of traits 
of the dreaming self shows close kinship, in the 
resources which it commands, in the manner of 
their elaboration, and in the interests and obli- 
gations which it assumes, with the dominant 
waking self which, through the agencies of en- 
dowment and experience, has brought into being 
the self that each has become by eliminative 
encouragement and suppression from among the 
possible selves that he might have been. 



Ill 

THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 

Dreaming, from the point of view of waking ac- 
tivity, is a manifestly and variously distinct type 
of mental procedure. It has, however, been set 
forth how the psychic operations, emerging dur- 
ing natural sleep, conform to definite types, and 
present groups of traits and their variations that 
contribute to the natural history of the normal 
mind. Yet without departing too radically from 
familiar experience, the psychologist has occasion 
to observe the occurrence of forms of conscious- 
ness that, though dream-like, represent an altered 
combination of conditioning factors. These it 
is our present purpose to portray, though with 
coarser, less detailed strokes. 

These variants of dream-experience are com- 
monly set forth in terms of their inducing occa- 
sions or excitements, — a procedure that makes 
no pretense of determining their distinctive psy- 
chological status, but merely offers a convenient 
grouping. I shall limit this survey to a few vari- 
eties, selected by reason of the distinctive factors 
which they introduce. These may be conveniently 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 223 

presented under three groups ; the first taking 
account of minor variations from normal dream- 
ing, while the scope of the other two is suffi- 
ciently indicated by the terms, " delirium " and 
" drug-intoxication." 

There is an interesting transitional state that 
appears to some more readily in the period of con- 
scious surrender to, and a passive acceptance of, 
the approaching slumber, and to others in the 
moments of waxing wakefulness, favorably in 
the partially aroused moments that follow upon a 
brief doze; or, it may be, in a retrocession from 
a moment of wakefulness back to a dreamy state. 
Many years ago a discerning student of dream- 
life, Alfred Maury, gave to these phenomena the 
name of "hypnagogic hallucinations," a term 
that suggests that they appear in the inducing 
moments of sleep, and that they are commonly 
projected as phantom pictures. Such dream-like 
appearances are probably quite familiar, though 
not recognized as distinctive. They might natu- 
rally be regarded as the persistence into a more 
wakeful moment of an actual dream-scene, — such 
waking perception or even outward projection of 
a vivid dream-picture being itself an established 
occurrence. It is, however, characteristic of this 
state that it involves an undeveloped, inattentive 
recognition of one's surroundings, and that the 
subject realizes both where he is and that he is 



224 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

close to waking. He is aware that the objects 
about him are familiar, though he gives them no 
penetrating recognition, — possibly assimilating 
them into the matter of his externalized dream- 
pictures, and throughout maintaining a markedly 
receptive attitude towards the floating contents 
of his mental panorama. He gives himself over to 
the delusion, which the veritable dreamer rarely 
suspects to be a delusion, of being a spectator 
instead of stage-manager and playwright in one, 
— and yet of being a peculiarly influential specta- 
tor, who now and then, by sending forth proper 
mental effort, inclines the sequence of scenes to 
his wishes. He supports the issue with something 
of the feeling that one has when, after making a 
shot in billiards, and the rolling balls indicate that 
the point will be barely made or barely missed, he 
follows the movements with a foolish straining of 
cue and head and body to will " his " ball ever so 
slightly to the desired direction. In maintaining 
a relation to the world without, in a partial aware- 
ness and orientation, in the supporting assistance 
of the thought-movement, and in a felt nearness 
to more alert consciousness, do these hypnoid states 
show the ear-marks of their hybrid character. 1 

1 These states clearly overlap the waxing and waning condi- 
tions of ordinary sleep, the dream-movements of which we have 
had occasion to consider. (See pages 182-187.) Yet there exist sig- 
nificant differences : the former involve a gradual, rather than a 
sharp transition from normal waking to normal sleep; the pre- 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 225 

It is not the form and content, but the subjec- 
tive relations of such dreams, that distinguish them 
from the dreams of true sleep. The one factor 
that expresses their peculiar contribution to the 
psychology of dreaming relates to the presence 
therein of some form of hallucination, some out- 
ward projection as real or partly real, of a sense- 
impression that has no other than a subjective 
basis. Such are hallucinations, whether they are 
believed to be real (as occurs in many, but by no 
means all the hallucinations of the insane), or 
whether their peculiar status is recognized by the 
subject himself. The vivid pictorial content of 
true dreaming may involve a closely allied type 
of brain-disturbance ; yet, judged by dream-stand- 
ards, what the dreamer sees is as real as what he 
feels ; and both are as intrinsically credited as are 
the reports of waking consciousness and the veri- 
fiable stimuli of the mundane sphere. When we 
awake, we know at once that the terrifying crea- 

sent group arises because in peculiarly disposed constitutions, 
there may intervene between the two a state diverging from 
ordinary dreaming in the direction of an abnormal state, con- 
ducive to the appearance of certain phenomena that are char- 
acteristic neither of normal waking nor of normal dreaming. 
The " hypnagogic hallucinations " (perhaps " dream-projected " 
visions would be a more expressive name) belong to the latter 
group, though presenting affiliations, rather than standing in 
serial connection with the other. It is also likely that the status 
of the circulation and tension of the brain in the two states pre- 
sents divergent conditions. The liability of imaginative children 
to these half-waking states seems well established. 



226 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tures of our imagination are purely fictitious, 
though the fear to which they gave rise was a gen- 
uine psychological experience. But if these same 
figments appeared to our waking eyes, within the 
walls of our actual habitations, they might inspire 
no fear at all, and yet be true hallucinations. 
Such dream-hallucinations, waking dreams, or 
false dreams, are important in that they aid in 
determining the status of this projecting process ; 
and in this respect they bear close analogies, 
on the one hand, to the still more deliberate and 
objective " crystal vision," in which, it will be 
recalled, a glance into a reflecting surface reveals 
to the properly qualified subject moving pictures 
of his subconscious train of thoughts ; and again, 
to the more passive, less intent procedure — a 
common pastime of imaginative children — of 
watching the figures in the dark with the eyes 
pressed against the pillow. 

These spontaneous series of pictures, that ap- 
pear to the closed eyes, are distinctly superior in 
richness of detail to the deliberate waking effort 
to wander in mind through the same scenes. This 
is by no means the added quality of concentration 
that enters by shutting out the objective world, 
for it cannot be applied to any of our memory- 
images at will ; that essential dream-factor of 
receptivity, of awaiting the passing show, is here 
as characteristic as in the deepest dreams. A sug- 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 227 

gestive corroboration of this trait is found in the 
observation that frequently the picture appears 
brilliant and detailed but without identification ; 
and the waking- part of the mind is set on a logi- 
cal search to give a local habitation and a name 
to what has been spontaneously aroused. In this, 
as in other details, does this variant dream-state 
proceed by steps, some of which belong to the 
dreaming and others to the waking world. 

I cite some personal experiences, and do this 
without apology, because so many of the recorded 
instances are defective along the lines of the pre- 
sent exposition. In settling myself to sleep, I 
found against the dark but luminous background 
of my closed eyes a very distinct picture of a street, 
with a line of ancient wall enlarging at close 
intervals into battlemented towers. I had a con- 
vincing feeling that the picture showed something 
that I had actually seen ; and, as I followed its 
unfoldment, I was presently confronted with a 
ruined Roman arch. I awaited further fragments, 
and soon found myself viewing a river spanned by 
a picturesque bridge ; then I deliberately followed 
the course of the river and caught glimpses of the 
opposite shore, of the old houses on the town side, 
of narrow streets and carved archways, of an early 
Gothic church, inclosing in one of its exterior 
arches a composition in stone, — a group of curi- 
ously sculptured figures, — set low, and very 
dusty with accumulated dirt ; all still unidentified. 
I then wandered back to the main avenue, and in 
a large square fronting thereon, saw the statue of 



228 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

a French statesman whose features I knew, but 
whose name for the moment refused to come ; and 
then I entered a bookshop near by. There I found 
the clue to the whole series, hitherto only the dis- 
sociated scenes of a traveler's recollection, prob- 
ably through the labeled views there displayed ; 
for I seemed suddenly to know that the town was 
Cahors, my whole acquaintance with which was a 
seven hours' sojourn six months previously. Let 
me emphasize that my waking attempt to retrace 
this experience was feeble, though not without 
success, the details being few and the pictures 
faint ; and secondly, that the development of the 
successive vistas, which all along I felt to belong 
to the same or related spots, I had passively to 
await, though supporting the effort by an inter- 
ested attention. 

On another occasion, in the moment of sudden 
awakening in the morning, I observed a very vivid 
image of a curious bird about which I had evi- 
dently been actually dreaming. It was something 
like a partridge or a golden pheasant, and I was 
calling upon some one to look at it. This call 
seems to have been a stifled cry, sufficient to arouse 
myself, but not wholly ; and in this half -aroused 
moment I reasoned, after the manner of dreams, 
that this was not the rare owl reported as seen by 
the members of the " bird-class," — an item read 
in the local paper the evening before. With the 
waning of the bird-picture came complete awaken- 
ing, and the feeling that the reasoning in which I 
had just indulged was somewhat irrelevant. 

Different observers report these objectified vi- 
sions, of whose subjective nature the visualizer is 
commonly well aware, in somewhat varied, though 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 229 

not inconsistent terms. " In my case," says Mr. 
Greenwood, " as in M. Maury's, these faces usu- 
ally appear in the dropping-off-to-sleep time. But 
they also appear when I wake in the night ; and 
the effect of their coming on either occasion is 
to dispel the 'tween-sleep-and- waking twilight and 
fix a critical attention on themselves. Yet they 
are never seen except when the eyelids are closed, 
and they have an apparent distance of five or six 
feet. Though they seem living enough, they look 
through the darkness as if traced in chalks on 
a black ground. Color they sometimes have, but 
the color is very faint. Indeed, their general as- 
pect is as if their substance were of pale smoke ; 
and their outlines waver, fade, and revive (with 
the effect, though not the aspect, of phosphores- 
cent limnings), so that, except for the half of a 
moment, the whole of the face is never clearly or 
completely visible at one time. Always of a strik- 
ingly distinctive character, these visionary faces 
are like none that can be remembered as seen in 
life or in pictures ; indeed, one of their constant 
and most remarkable characteristics is their con- 
vincing imlikeness." 

M. Maury's visions were in the nature of brief 
resurrections of familiar objects and persons, and 
at times appeared under his drooping eyelids when 
yielding to fatigue. While reading of the prim- 
itive life of southern Russia, in a momentary 
relaxation he saw a man in brown garb, like a 
capuchin, suggestive of a figure in one of Zur- 
baran's paintings ; while reading on animal in- 
stinct, he similarly visualized a lion in the pose 
and under the circumstances in which he had seen 
a caged lion in his Oriental travels. Such expe- 



230 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

riences lie connects with retinal disturbances ; and 
Professor Ladd accounts for his own visions in 
similar terms : " All manner of inanimate things, 
of animals, plants, and human beings, seen in 
dreams, may resolve themselves into the fantastic 
schemata of the retinal field, if we can only man- 
age to surprise these schemata with an observing 
critical consciousness." Mr. Galton has collected 
a variety of experiences among persons who have 
the power partly to control and partly to await 
such externalized visions. Included in his collec- 
tion of cases, that as a whole have to do with 
waking hallucinations, are some definitely sugges- 
tive of an hypnagogic origin. They present the 
same vividness and tendency to sequences of 
transformation, — such as showers of red roses 
turning into a flight of golden spangles, or, in 
another instance, bright golden sparks turning 
into a flock of sheep rapidly running down a 
hill. Professor Herrick's view is corroborative ; 
he notes the kaleidoscopic frequency of change 
of face or object, likening them to the changes 
in form of cloud-pictures ; though in his experi- 
ence they cluster about wholly unreal and ima- 
ginary things. Mr. Greenwood offers the sug- 
gestion that the remarkable and clearly abnormally 
inspired paintings of Blake had their origin in 
this type of hallucination. " I am inclined to think 
so because his wonderful drawing, ' The Ghost 
of a Flea,' is precisely such a transcript as I could 
have made by the score but for lack of his pic- 
torial skill. Under my own eyelids I have seen 
many a face of the same awful family ; and some 
more dreadful still, being alive and astir with 
animation." 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 231 

In leaving this interesting variety of dream- 
experiences, 1 their analogy to otherwise induced 
conditions should be noted. The close affiliation 
of these hallucinations to those to be presently 
encountered as the result of drug-intoxication will 
hardly be overlooked. They also find their counter- 
parts in sudden and unexpected intrusions, into 
a waking moment, of hallucinated appearances, — 
thereby indicating some real, but undetermined 
origin in a specific brain-excitement. Likewise do 
hallucinations of comparable status occur in dis- 
ordered minds. They have been called pseudo- 
hallucinations, and are commonly distinguished by 
the subjects thereof from the full-fledged variety 
with which disturbed minds are also likely to be 
troubled. They may be regarded as the result of 

1 It may be pertinent to note that there occurs occasionally a 
condition of dream-stupor that may be induced in predisposed 
sleepers by sudden awakening, though it also occurs spontane- 
ously. The subject thereof finds great difficulty in regaining 
consciousness, as also in getting control of muscles and sense- 
organs. He may reel and stagger, rub his eyes, and make efforts 
to keep them open, apparently struggling against a relapse into 
deeper sleep ; and, somewhat dazed and befogged in his percep- 
tions, his condition suggests the intoxication through the action 
of a drug. At times also he proves to be suggestible and able to 
perform routine actions in an automatic fashion. An energetic 
stimulus, such as a dash of water upon his face, may be needed to 
arouse his dormant faculties. The condition is interesting as illus- 
trative of the variety of behavior that may intervene between the 
sleeping and the waking consciousness, and in turn suggests de- 
finite, though unidentified, processes within the brain. 



232 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

stimulation of certain brain-areas, that may arise 
under quite different occasions, all of them favor- 
ing deflniteness of projection, and furthering 
the spontaneous flow of subconsciously derived 
memory-images. 

I cite a single instance recorded by one who, 
when fully recovered from his mental trouble, was 
able to appraise the precise status of his abnormal 
experiences. He was subject to a variety of excit- 
ing hallucinations, that came to him as voices out 
of a hollow in the wall. On one occasion the 
words thus emerging and solemnly spoken were, 
" Change your allegiance." Being a Russian sub- 
ject, he interpreted the command to mean that he 
must renounce the Czar; and he accordingly de- 
cided to become an English citizen. With this he 
saw in natural size a lion, that for an instant placed 
its paws upon his shoulders, causing actual pain ; 
and the voice in the wall said, " Now you have 
a lion — you will rule." At this juncture he re- 
called that the lion was the symbol of England's 
power. Though the touch of the lion seems to have 
been an hallucinated sensation, the lion itself, as 
the patient knew, was a creation of his mind's 
eye. It gave rise to no fright; yet it was real 
enough to be brought in associative correspond- 
ence with the message of the voices, that in turn 
were hallucinations. Thus subtly does the dis- 
ordered mind present both analogies and differ- 
ences to the dreaming incidents of a normal 
brain. 1 — Kandinsky : Sinnestauchungen. 

1 Undoubtedly many of the recorded historical hallucinations 
were of this transitional type. As Dr. Maudsley aptly notes : 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 233 

An allied status to the conditions just con- 
sidered may be assigned to the varieties of de- 
lirium ; and here likewise do transitional pheno- 
mena occur in nervously constituted persons who, 
though otherwise in good health, occasionally fall 
(and it may be during sleep) into a condition 
that is pervaded not by ordinary dreaming, but by 
this distressing and half-conscious type of mental 
wandering. It is true of all these states that the 
subject has so far lost control of any power of 
analysis, is so entirely immersed and usually dis- 
tressed amid the obsessions of the insistent and 
absorbing world of his own creation, that he 
brings to more normal consciousness only a pained 
emotional state and a confused impression of its 
incentive. In these semi-delirious dreams there is 
a troubled feeling that persists, and possibly with 
accompanying analysis of its origin, through the 
intermittent emergence into a nearly waking state ; 
but the struggling consciousness soon falls back 
— like a bound captive — into a form of mental 
helplessness, with an undercurrent of desire to 

" When Luther saw the Devil enter his chamber at Wittenberg 
and instantly flung the inkstand at his head, he seems to have 
been neither horrified nor greatly surprised, and to have resented 
the visit rather as an intrusion which he had expected from an 
adversary with whom he had had many encounters; but had the 
Devil really surprised Luther by walking into his chamber, I 
doubt whether he would have been so quick and energetic in his 
assault." 



234 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

arouse itself and shake off this oppressive coil. 
Commonly there are changes of personality, the 
dreamer being transformed into something else 
or somebody else ; or there is a drifting off into 
unknown worlds with a subsequent reentry into a 
former phase of existence, — all in nebulous terms 
with pervading depressive emotions, gradually giv- 
ing way to longer periods of real wakefulness, in 
which organic discomfort and painful sensations 
within the head commonly persist. Of delirium 
accompanying high temperatures, or ensuing upon 
congested conditions of the brain, a similar de- 
scription would be apposite. In all such states 
the determinant factor is the personal disposition ; 
and physicians who deal especially with children 
attach significance, in gauging the constitution 
of their patient, to the particular point of the 
bodily temperature at which delirium ensues. 

In conformity with the status thus assigned 
to them, we shall not expect the wanderings of 
delirium to present any distinctive psychological 
character, save in so far as this may result from a 
specific physiological condition. The latter is con- 
sistent with a state of the brain that is not sleep, 
that is distinctly excited, that easily goes over into 
motor expression, and equally projects the brain- 
excitations into vivid and persistent hallucina- 
tions. Delirious patients thus typically shout and 
talk, laugh and cry, roll about in agony, gnashing 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 235 

their teeth and cramping their limbs, occasionally 
throwing off the covers, or jumping off the bed, 
and even doing personal injury to themselves or 
others. They live in another world, do not recog- 
nize the surroundings which none the less are pre- 
sent to their senses, and in the lucid intervals 
between the more violent delirious attacks, are 
able to give some account of their troubled fan- 
cies, as well as to come into more normal relations 
with their environment. All depends upon the 
temperament of the patient and the mode of 
attack upon the brain-tissues which the fever 
pursues. 

One such patient recalls from among a great 
whirl of chaotic fancies only this recurrent sensa- 
tion. He seemed to realize that he was ill and in 
the hospital, and that there he had access to a 
peculiar system of transportation, after the man- 
ner of the little wire baskets sometimes used in 
department-stores to carry parcels and change; 
and that this was his method of visiting different 
portions of the city. He was invited to supper 
and a theatre-party, and to reach his destina- 
tion entered his traveling basket and returned 
by the same means. On one occasion, when the 
nurse awoke him at night to administer medi- 
cine, he told her that he would never ride in a 
street-car so long: as that convenient basket was 
waiting outside. A football player, in a similar 
condition, sat up in bed and shouted out the sig- 
nals for a game in which he was about to partici- 
pate. The nurse, alarmed by the possibility of a 



236 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

delirious " rush," called for assistance ; and pre- 
sently the patient jumped from the bed and vio- 
lently struggled against the assembled persons, 
who, to him, were the opposing team blocking 
the way to victory. 

Another instance reflects less of the active and 
more of the ruminating fancies of the delirious. 
The patient seemed always in some deep trouble; 
to be sunk in a pit or to be climbing measure- 
less heights. He moved upward on a ladder, only 
to find himself again at the bottom ; or it was 
incumbent upon him, Tantalus-like, to make two 
objects fit, one of which was altogether too small 
for the other ; or some lost object had to be found, 
and a maze-like wandering undertaken in an end- 
less quest. These journeys were attended by some 
incoherent talk, and occasional groans and cries, 
from which fragmentary suggestions an outline 
of the dreamer's occupation could be pieced to- 
gether. In another instance a delirious student 
was convinced that he had gained some peculiar 
psychic power by which to influence the actions 
of others, even to the point of annihilating them 
by his mysterious force. By this means he had 
collected in a cave under the house a number of 
captives, who were kept there through his potent 
influence. After practicing this art for a time, 
he entangled in his net a professor to whom he 
bore a strong dislike ; and with one all-powerful 
look shriveled him up to a mere handful. In a 
more wakeful state the dream would be resumed ; 
and in this instance remorse for the professor's 
death set in, and later induced an entrance into 
another dream-episode in which the captives were 
all liberated. 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 237 

On the whole, delirium contributes but moder- 
ately to the varieties of dream-experience. Their 
distinctive status centres about the condition of 
brain-excitement, that is in contrast with the quies- 
cence of sleep, that favors hallucination and the 
active motor type of dream-progression. It pre- 
sents affiliations with normal dreaming by the 
manner in which it elaborates its material, and by 
which it derives it from inner excitations and the 
subconsciously stored memory-images. The cha- 
otic and extravagant, and at times the syste- 
matic and recurrent phases of the delirious wan- 
derings and the vivid reality of the hallucinations 
present analogies to characteristic symptoms of 
more permanent and more organic brain-disorder. 
Among drug-intoxications its analogy is with 
certain stages of alcoholic excitement. Through 
these several affiliations, and through its specific 
physiological connections, delirium presents a 
group of phenomena corroborative of the general 
relations that form our present concern. 

Of all the means that the psychologist com- 
mands to transform the genius of his mental 
life, none seems more inviting than the permit to 
enter other worlds by the magic of a potent drug. 
Indeed, this easy avenue of escape from the hum- 
drum round of flat and stale experience has been 
a refuge in all times. Almost all civilizations have 
delved sufficiently into nature's secrets to dis- 



238 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

cover some form of earthly transport, some cere- 
monial rite, to give a setting to the god-given 
rapture. Most of the drugs that act as psychic 
poisons we owe to the discoveries of primitive peo- 
ples, or to the indulgences of Oriental mysticism. 
Certainly their action is evidence, the most con- 
vincing to be desired, of the conditioning power 
of physiological brain-processes upon what we 
shall feel and think ; a few whiffs of a gas or a 
slight injection under the skin, or the chewing or 
smoking of a vegetable preparation, may com- 
pletely transform character and personality, wholly 
transport to another mental world. In this field 
our knowledge is almost entirely empirical, merely 
the variable record of experience, with only occa- 
sional insight into the connection by virtue of 
which the effect ensues. Let us attempt in a 
frankly descriptive essay to set forth the general 
features of a few of these drug-intoxications, con- 
sidering them in two classes, according as they 
induce a rather prompt and general loss of sensi- 
bility and consciousness, or as they modify more 
exclusively the mode of behavior of our associa- 
tive mechanism. The first group are the anaes- 
thetics, such as ether, chloroform, nitrous-oxide 
gas, and allied compounds ; while the latter may 
be termed the intoxicants, deliriants, or psychic 
poisons. 

As the effect of the anaesthetic, if continued, is 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 239 

to induce more or less unconsciousness, it will be 
only in the transitional stages, before the appear- 
ance of the so-called surgical stage, and still more 
favorably in the longer periods of recovery from 
the loss of consciousness, that the mental experi- 
ences will leave an impress sufficient to their recall 
upon recovery. The nature of the anaesthetic, 
the period of its operation, and decidedly the tem- 
perament and condition of the subject, enter to 
determine the content and quality of the artifi- 
cially induced mental progression. I shall again 
select, in conformity with my central purpose, a 
few illustrations of dreams and visions under drug- 
incentive, that offer analogies and pertinent con- 
trasts to the dreams of normal sleep and to the 
states of differently affected consciousness, which 
are next to be considered. 1 

1 Referring to such a work as that of Dr. Hewitt (Ancesthetics, 
1901) for an adequate account of the bodily and mental altera- 
tions which the several anaesthetics induce, I note here merely that 
nitrous-oxide gas is very quick in its action, inducing a brief anaes- 
thesia, such as is adequate to the extraction of a tooth within a 
minute or more, or less; while ether or chloroform, according to the 
manner of administration, will act in from five to thirty minutes, 
the latter more precipitately ; that these " surgical " anaesthetics 
present ordinarily stages of influence ; the first, a stage of excite- 
ment, in which there is a rapid flow of ideas, only partial loss of 
sensibility and of the power of movement (the latter disappear- 
ing before the former), along with a persisence of reflex actions 
and a dulled sensibility to pain ; the second, a stage in which these 
several processes diminish in degree, leaving a confused train of 
ideas, practically no power of response, the action of only a few 



240 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

Preservative dreams under partial anaesthesia 
are frequent and pronounced. Most commonly are 
the dreams suggested by the subjective noises — 
a buzzing or singing in the head — which the ini- 
tial action of the drug induces. 1 They are quite 
generally interpreted as the noises accompanying 
locomotion, such as traveling in a train, or a trol- 
ley, or a carriage, or an automobile, though occa- 
sionally suggestive of other vibrating sounds, such 
as those of a machine-shop or factory. This audi- 
tory clue is followed with a simple, or, it may be, 
with an elaborate variety of interpretations, which 
at times give way to a more reflective dream- 
construction. Of like influence are the impres- 
sions through eye and ear and touch, which the 
subject may still be able to receive in regard to 
what is said and done in the operating-room, and 
the bodily sensations induced by the procedures 
of the operation. 

I shall at once put together a group of cases 
easy of interpretation. A dentist instructed his 
patient, to whom he administered nitrous-oxide gas, 
to raise and lower her hand from time to time so 
long as she could control the movement. Her mo- 
deeper reflexes, and the dream-life of an inner contemplation ; 
and the third, a stage, which is the stage of operation, in which 
mental life is practically wholly in aheyance. 

1 In dental operations the contact of the instruments with the 
teeth may induce actual sounds, readily transmitted to the ear 
through the skull. 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 241 

nientary dream was that of riding in a stage-coach, 
and of being pursued by robbers, who demanded 
that she hold up her hands. In the period of 
recovery (nitrous-oxide gas), a woman of Celtic 
extraction, while the dentist was forcing her into 
a position convenient to discharge the blood from 
her mouth, suddenly struck at him, with the words, 
" Don't you hold me, I '11 slap you." When later 
informed of her action, she explained that in her 
dream she had entered a street-car, and that some 
one had tried to detain her ; and to him were her 
words addressed. 

The following is the recollection, after many 
years, of the extraction of a tooth during boyhood 
(light dose of ether). The boy was standing with 
his parents at the railway station of the town in 
which they lived. The noise of the approaching 
train was heard, and was then continued in the 
sound of the grinding of the brakes and the escape 
of steam, as the train came to a standstill. They 
all entered, the boy taking a seat on a stool in 
the middle of the aisle. Presently a brakeman ap- 
proached from over the top of a car (as brakemen 
do on freight cars), and somehow reached a position 
over the boy's seat. Here he began boring through 
the roof of the car with a huge auger, which grad- 
ually pierced the wood and then suddenly came 
through and transfixed the boy to his seat, — the 
last, obviously, the moment of extracting the tooth. 

A lady had two teeth drawn under an anaes- 
thetic, and after the removal of the second wailed 
aloud, "What is the use of it all? " Upon recovery 
she explained that she had dreamed of dying in 
great agony (tooth number one), then of being 
born again in equal pain (tooth number two), 



242 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

while her remark was a protest addressed to the 
Deity ; and it may be added that the whole period 
of the operation was about twenty seconds. A 
young lady upon her way to the dentist's met her 
bosom friend. This left a pleasing impression on 
her mind as she succumbed to the anaesthetic 
(nitrous-oxide gas), and set her to dreaming of 
an excursion in company with her friend, when 
unexpectedly her companion grew cold and harsh, 
and finally expressed her displeasure by slapping 
her on the mouth with a book. Another young 
lady in the period of recovery (chloroform) showed 
her suggestibility in a marked manner. The win- 
dow was opened to hasten her coming to ; and a 
friend, present at the operation, feeling a draught, 
slipped on a bath-robe. Upon observing this 
action, the patient complained of feeling cold, and 
a moment later, noticing another attendant collar- 
less and with sleeves rolled up, asked to be fanned 
in order to cool off. A shout from a boy passing 
on the street aroused the remark, " That must 
be Lilian B.," a playmate of her childhood. This 
seemed to start off a revery of her schooldays, 
which continued until another voice suggested a 
different train of ideas. 

An apt instance of the persistence of a visual 
stimulus into the " nitrous-oxide " dream is fur- 
nished by the experience of a dentist's office, the 
ceiling of which was papered with a complex geo- 
metrical design in dark contrasted colors. The 
last impression, by most persons subconsciously 
observed, that reached the patient's eyes, as he 
settled back upon the chair, was of this pattern ; 
and a common vision during the minute's loss of 
consciousness was that of a kaleidoscopic play of 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 243 

geometrical forms, far more brilliant and effective 
than the objective counterpart. The motor phe- 
nomena, analogous to the dream of natural sleep 
that is carried over into action, are readily ob- 
served, particularly in the exciting stages. The 
patient may weep or shout or laugh or pray or 
strike out violently, and occasionally perform some 
routine action. For instance, a barber, emerging 
from a brief anaesthesia (nitrous-oxide gas), went 
through the movements of stropping a razor, while 
dreaming that he was shaving a customer and 
that he became sick at his task (the nausea due 
to the gas). Under like circumstances, a young 
man went through the movements of playing 
hand-ball ; and a child jumped from a dentist's 
chair, alarmed by the skeleton which her dream- 
vision had conjured up. 

The charges upon the receding consciousness 
are carried out, so far as may be, in the altered 
condition ; and usually in a characteristic dream- 
manner. Thus, one who, upon inhaling the ether, 
was told to count to himself and to speak out the 
hundreds, recalled that he was at " thirty-nine " 
when he lost power to go on, and on awaking 
an hour later immediately began to count, " one 
hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and 
two." This he did before consciousness returned; 
he knew nothing of the operation or of his count- 
ing, the incident having been observed by the at- 
tendant. Similarly, a lady who objected to the 
gag in her mouth (for the extraction of a tooth 
under nitrous-oxide gas), because of its interfer- 
ence with her screaming, actually kept up a con- 
stant howl throughout the operation, but upon 
coming to was unaware that she had made any 



244 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

noise, though she recalled that she had dreamed 
that she was screaming. 

I proceed at once to certain more complex 
mental contemplations. After breathing the ether 
vapor for about ten minutes, the subject, a school- 
teacher, remarked, though already in a condition 
that left no waking memory, " The ether tastes 
like Mrs. P.'s [her landlady's] mint sauce." The 
subject remembered that in the inducing stage 
she imagined herself at the sea-bordering town 
in which she lived, and heard the surf splashing 
against the rocks. Also did she remark (at a 
moment identified with the subjective ringing in 
her ears), " This is P.'s machine-shop." In los- 
ing consciousness she had the feeling of moving 
with terrific speed through chaos, a sensation that 
was resumed in recovery, and was followed by the 
idea that she had made a wonderful discovery, and 
had found the point where the infinite merged 
into the finite. This discovery was to be made 
public and to receive the approval of educational 
circles. Actually her first words were, " Oh dear ! 
I have been such a long way off." In the rather 
long period of regaining consciousness, she showed 
herself responsive to sensations and emotions and 
indulged in conversation : " I am going on the 
stage." " You are ? " " Yes, I am going to sing 
in ' Parsifal.' I can get $7000 for that, and you 
would not teach school for $600, when you 
could get $7000 for doing that, would you?" 
(She had actually sung at a small gathering, and 
had heard of a singer who commanded a large 
salary.) When, to allay her excitement, a morphine 
injection was to be used, and she caught sight of 
the syringe, she recognized it and threatened to 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 245 

cry out if it were applied, but actually received the 
puncture with but faint protest. At this stage 
she experienced rapid and. chaotic flights of ideas, 
and felt the presence of impulses to do things 
with no desire to counteract them (suggestibility), 
— all in analogy to ordinary dreaming. 

In this record we meet a notable and perplex- 
ing element in these anaesthetic dreams, — the 
metaphysical conviction of piercing the secret of 
reality. It is an experience frequently reported, 
and naturally by persons of philosophic, reflective 
temperament. I shall give a few instances, pre- 
ceding them by one or two others that lack this 
intuitional factor, but reflect the professional in- 
terest of the subject. 

A physician under ether for the removal of the 
appendix, in a moment of lighter anaesthesia had 
the impression (of course purely fictitious) that the 
operator was making the incision over the left, 
instead of over the right iliac fossa, and in his 
dream both wondered at and protested against 
the blunder. Another physician (under chloroform 
for an operation upon the hand) immediately 
upon recovery made this note : " I thought I was 
myself giving the anaesthetic, while some one kept 
anxiously inquiring through a telephone, ' Is he 
all right ? ' until I was in an agony of fear lest 
he might not be so. I thought my hand was re- 
strained (it was doubtless the case) whenever I 
attempted to give more chloroform. I heard the 
sound of the sharp spoon on the warts, but felt no 



246 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

pain, and thought they belonged to my patient." 
The words, " Is he all right?" were actually 
spoken by the operator, while the telephone may 
have been only another interpretation of the sub- 
jective sound in the ears. The same observer relates 
the following experience : " On another occasion 
whilst under ether, I became a noble lord seated 
in a magnificent chariot in the ' Row ' at the 
height of the season. I was hopelessly and deplor- 
ably intoxicated, and yet became aware that an 
attempt was being made to photograph me in this 
undignified condition. I shouted to the coach- 
man to drive on, but instead of obeying me, he 
and the footman pressed a mask over my face. I 
smelt ether, and struggled madly to prevent them 
taking the photograph, which I thought was being 
done for a wager and would be all over London 
the next day." The words, " Drive on," were 
addressed to the operator by the anaesthetist, and 
doubtless suggested the dream. 1 

So long ago as 1800, Sir Humphry Davy, 
while experimenting with nitrous-oxide gas, de- 
scribed the feeling that pervaded his reflection 
thus: "Nothing exists but thought. The Universe 
is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and 
pains." This metaphysical pronouncement is 

1 Whether the rest of this dream is susceptible of rational 
interpretation, is not recorded. One may hazard the suggestion 
that the odor of ether suggested the odors accompanying the 
photographic manipulations ; and likewise that the sitter and the 
patient both pose as subjects of an operation. Be this as it may, 
the incidents are suggestive of a connection with real, though 
subconsciously utilized, relations with actual circumstances. 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 247 

variously experienced, and occasionally with a 
visual projection, such as the intent following of 
parallel lines or loops in mystic symbolism, with a 
conviction that they reveal the nature of reality. 

In one record this extra-bodily feeling is thus 
expressed : " I suddenly experienced the extraor- 
dinary impression that my spiritual being stood 
visibly outside my body, regarding that deserted 
body lying on the bed." In another in these words : 
" When under chloroform, the Platonic ideas 
came to me that Matter was only phenomenal, 
while the only reality was that which underlay 
Matter — viz., its spiritual substance." 

Sir William Ramsay's experience is accurately 
and interestingly recorded. He noted the intro- 
ductory stages in which consciousness still per- 
sists, but in which dream-motives begin to occupy 
the attention. His senses responded to the sub- 
jective stimuli that the anaesthetic aroused. The 
taste was suggestive of peppermint ; he heard a 
sound as of two tones, the one a harmonic of 
the other ; his eye played with figures of parallel 
lines which formed a grate-like pattern ; and then 
there came the deeper, more unconscious stage, 
bringing the true revelation. " An overwhelm- 
ing impression fixed itself upon me that the state 
in which I then was, was reality ; that now I had 
reached the true solution of the secret of the 
universe, in understanding the secret of my own 
mind ; that all outside objects were merely pass- 
ing reflections on the eternal mirror of my mind ; 
some more, some less transient." This experi- 
menter also tested his power, during at least part 



248 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

of these inner contemplations, to maintain relation 
with the world of reality. He tried to rehearse 
his morning's occupation, his walk down Oxford 
Street, and found that he could do so, but that 
these memories impressed him as a fleeting vision, 
something quite trivial and transitory. " The 
main and impressive fact for me was that / was 
self-existent, and that time and space were illu- 
sions. This was the real Ego, on whose surface 
ripples of incident arose, to fade and vanish like 
the waves on a pond. . . . But to test the truth 
of this conception, I have generally noted the ob- 
jects near me. Some one, perhaps, made a remark ; 
for example, ' He has had nearly enough now.' 
This remark wearied me, because I had heard it 
so often before ; I conceived a low opinion of 
the being who could pass his life in saying such 
a trivial and unimportant thing, and I disdained 
to answer. Or, perhaps, my eye caught sight of 
a Bunsen burner — a common object in every 
laboratory ; and here again I knew that it had 
been there through endless ages. Some noise — 
the emptying of a cart of coals on the street, per- 
haps — struck my attention. I not merely knew 
that it had happened before, but I could have 
predicted that it would happen at that particular 
moment." * 

1 Sir William Ramsay also had his sayings recorded by an 
amanuensis; they reflect the dream-sense of personal illumination 
and also the reflective disappointment at the vanity, at least when 
recorded in words, of what brings with it a conviction of such 
exalted significance. In approaching normal consciousness he 
exclaimed, " Good Heavens, is this all ? " This same sentiment, 
together with some infusion of the incoherence of drifting thought 
appears in the following oracular pronouncements: "This, one 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 249 

Mr. J. A. Symonds, the well-known writer, has 
recorded his experience in the following words : 
" I seemed at first in a state of utter blankness ; 
then came flashes of intense light alternating with 
blackness, and with a keen vision of what was 
going on in the room around me, but no sensa- 
tion of touch. I thought that I was near death, 
when suddenly my soul became aware of God, who 
was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so 
to speak, in an intense personal reality. I felt 
Him streaming in like light upon me, and heard 
Him saying in no language, but as hands touch 
hands and communicate sensations, ' I led thee, I 
guided thee ; you will never sin and weep and 
wail in madness any more ; for now you have seen 
Me.' My whole consciousness seemed brought into 
one point of absolute conviction ; the independ- 
ence of my mind from my body was proved by 
the phenomena of this acute sensibility to spirit- 
ual facts, this utter deadness of the senses ; Life 
and Death seemed mere names. ... I cannot 
describe the ecstasy I felt." 

Professor James, upon the basis of more than a 
single experience, testifies to the " depth beyond 
depth of truth " that seems revealed to the ether 
or nitrous-oxide inhaler. He is overwhelmed by 
an " exciting sense of an intense metaphysical 

little piece of enormous coherence of Universe — utterly ridicu- 
lous in its smallness." " This is the scheme of the Universe and 
my being here — but I never reached the point of having taken 
ether before." " The Universe is in our brain. Is this a big thing ? 
Do you hear the man sawing — more or less quickly ? Now I 
breathe hard. Now I note appearance of a particular man there 
[pointing to fireplace], whom I never asked you to note before, 
nor will now, but he appears as part of the Universe." 



250 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth 
beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The 
mind sees all the logical relations of being with an 
apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its 
normal consciousness offers no parallel ; only as 
sobriety returns, the feeling of insight fades, and 
one is left staring vacantly at a few disjointed 
words and phrases, as one stares at a cadaverous 
looking snow peak from which the sunset glow 
has just fled, or at the black cinder left by an 
extinguished brand." Though the inspiration 
leaves a wholly evanescent or trivial vestige, it is 
accompanied by a sense of reconciliation, of solu- 
tion of the opposing contradictions of life, that 
remains after the experience is valued merely as 
a dream. Professor James's " anaesthetic " utter- 
ances, which at the moment seemed to him to over- 
flow with significance, seem to harp upon a series 
of contrasts, for which ordinary terminology is 
inadequate, if indeed it does not construe them 
into nonsense. 1 One of his correspondents like- 

1 One of these sentences reads : " By George, nothing but 
othing ; " while another similarly insists that " it is not nonsense 
but onsense ; " all this in a vague but passionate attempt to put 
into words the intensity of the anaesthetic revelation. Indeed, 
under this title there is an interesting account by one who is thor- 
oughly convinced of the objective validity of the experience under 
anaesthetics ; to him it stands as the moment of religious and phi- 
losophic enlightenment, of an all-embracing inspiration, in which 
one reaches behind the mere semblance of things, and stands face 
to face with truth. All this is interesting, as indicative not only of 
the overwhelming impression which the experience makes upon a 
sensitive mind, but likewise of the variable manner of absorbing 
what is, at best, a type of emotionalized sense of conviction, itself 
defying the narrow formula of waking rationality. The inter- 
pretation given to these experiences by Professor James is sug- 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 251 

wise writes : " I seemed to be directly under the 
foot of God, and I thought He was grinding his 
own life up out of my pain. ... At the acutest 
point I saw. I understood for a moment things 
that I have now forgotten, — things that no one 
could remember while retaining sanity." 

I must also remind the reader of Dr. Holmes's 
account : " The veil of eternity was lifted. The 
one great truth, that which underlies all human 
experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that 
philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed 
upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all 
was clear : a few words had lifted my intelligence 
to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. 
As my natural condition returned, I remembered 
my resolution, and staggering to my desk, I wrote, 
in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-em- 
bracing truth still glimmering in my conscious- 
ness. The words were these (children may smile ; 
the wise will ponder) : i A strong smell of turpen- 
tine prevails throughout.' " 

It falls beyond our present purpose to set forth 
the great variety of sensory and mental experi- 
ences sequent to the toxic effect of drugs upon 
the higher nervous centres. Their citation may 
be profitably limited to such as bear upon the ana- 
logy of the waking dreams of intoxication to the 
normal sleeping dream, and to the characteristic 
transformations of mental experience induced by 
anaesthetics. The effects of an indulgence in 

gestive. See his Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 389 et seq., 
and also the essay on " Some Hegelisnis," in The Will to Believe. 



252 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

opium or hasheesh or mescal present decided dif- 
ferences ; and their psychological action is promi- 
nently determined by the possessions and consti- 
tution of the brain which they affect. De Quincey 
appropriately remarks that, " if a man ( whose 
talk is of oxen ' should become an opium-eater, 
the probability is that (if he is not too dull to 
dream at all) he will dream about oxen ; " and 
surely his own case presents the complex issues 
of an inherited sensitive temperament, a marked 
literary imagination, a sentimental reaction to 
the experiences of life, together with the physical 
conditions of severe hardship in youth, actual 
bodily disorder, and the cumulative effects of the 
opium poisoning. It is somewhat difficult to esti- 
mate the psychological value of his confessions, 
in spite of the obvious sincerity and discerning 
introspective powers of the narrator. 

It is interesting to recall that he referred the 
source of the dream-imagery of his later visions 
to his experiences of early youth or to incidents 
many years in the past. " The tyranny to the 
human face " * that with its endless transforma- 
tions haunted his dreams finds in part a definite 
incentive in the face of an unfortunate girl who 

1 " Now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the 
human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innu- 
merable faces upturned to the heavens — faces imploring, wrath- 
ful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by 
generations, by centuries." 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 253 

befriended him when both were outcasts, wander- 
ing- through the night in the streets of London. 
Another is the resuscitation of an appearance 
(surely unusual in a cottage in the Lake region 
of England) of a turbaned Malay in Oriental 
dress, who knocked at the door of De Quincey's 
home, and who, by his strange garb and stranger 
speech, naturally caused some consternation to 
the household. Indeed, the piece of opium that 
De Quincey offered the Oriental was their only 
point of sympathetic intercourse. It was the 
vision of this Malay that entered into the most 
terrifying of his opium dreams. It brought up 
with unimaginable horror fantastic tortures and 
an awful fate. " Under the connecting feeling of 
tropical heat and vertical sunlight, I brought 
together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all 
trees and plants, usages and appearances, that 
are found in all tropical regions, and assembled 
them together in China or Indostan. From kin- 
dred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her 
gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted 
at, grinned at, and chattered at, by monkeys, by 
parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and 
was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret 
rooms : I was the idol ; I was the priest ; I was 
worshipped ; I was sacrificed. I fled from the 
wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia : 
Vishnu hated me : Seeva laid wait for me. I came 
suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, 
they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trem- 
bled at. I was buried for a thousand years in 
stone coffins with mummies and sphinxes, in nar- 
row chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. 
I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles ; 



254 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy 
things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud." In addi- 
tion to these more spiritual terrors, there entered 
visions of physical horror, particularly associated 
with the crocodile. "All the feet of the tables, 
sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life : the 
abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering 
eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand 
repetitions ; and I stood loathing and fascinated." 

The conditions under which the opium-eater's 
dreams occur are distinctly variable, and from De 
Quincey's narrative difficult to determine. At 
times they seem to belong to true dreaming, though 
with an easy transition to a waking state; and 
again they are wholly compatible with the exercise 
of the ordinary powers of perception and move- 
ment, are, indeed, intermittently dismissed in favor 
of the occupations of the moment, even combin- 
ing with these, and imparting to the situation an 
effect " exalted and solemnized by the power of 
dreams." It was, for example, at midday, during 
one of the recurrent variations of the Oriental 
dream, that the gentle voices of his children broke 
in upon his terrifying visions. " I protest that 
so awful was the transition from the damned cro- 
codile, and the other unutterable monsters and 
abortions of my dreams, to the sight of inno- 
cent human natures and of infancy, that in the 
mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and 
could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces." In 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 255 

illustration of the exaltation of the opium-excited 
brain that still maintains an easy and rational 
relation to the world of reality, De Quincey nar- 
rates that in the first periods of his addiction 
to the drug, he would so time his dose on Saturday 
as to enjoy at evening, with the added intensity of 
his excited imagination, the Opera at Covent Gar- 
den and the animated scenes in the markets about 
it, through which he wandered most of the night, 
transforming, though with recognition of his 
whereabouts, the small episodes of London life into 
the fascinating adventures of an idealized world. 
Yet the intoxicant dream is a peculiarly uncer- 
tain indulgence ; the determining influence of the 
individual constitution, as well as the vital differ- 
ence of excess, may create a dreamer's paradise or 
a dreamer's hell. 

Of the kind of experience which the novitiate 
may expect, I find no more citable account than 
that given by Dr. Clarke. Three inquiring medi- 
cal students each partook of a moderate dose of 
Cannabis Indica, and at the end of an hour began 
to feel " queer," and decided to go to their sev- 
eral homes. In doing so, two of them had to exer- 
cise some self-control, were talkative and restless, 
but soon went into a sound sleep, and had nothing 
to report the next morning. The third experi- 
enced acutely the sense of amplification * and per- 

1 Of this an additional illustration : " Ascending a flight of 
stairs from his sitting-room to his bedchamber seemed to occupy 
time enough for a journey from Boston to Washington and back. 
It required a century for the winding of his watch." 



256 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

sonal exaltation which that drug at times induces. 
He was intensely impressed with his own impor- 
tance, with the beauty and proportions of his own 
person, and upon entering a street car felt com- 
pelled to mention these qualities to the conductor, 
dwelling upon the athletic build of his arms and 
thighs and his superiority to the puny passen- 
gers. Indeed, he advised the conductor to put 
these others out of the car, as persons unfit to 
ride with so august a personage as himself ; and 
yet he had sufficient self-control to alight at the 
proper corner and to find his own home. Here 
again everything was transformed by the magic 
potion. The portal was magnificent, the hall 
imposing, the stairway grand, his wife a great 
lady. At this point the delusions became more 
systematic. His personality dissolved into two ; 
the one a notable physician, the other an indigent 
patient, upon whom the former discovered an 
affection and decided to operate. Upon this the 
prospective surgeon went to his study and brought 
out some instruments, stretching out the supposed 
patient (likewise himself) upon the sofa. His wife 
was naturally alarmed, and at this juncture sum- 
moned a physician. But the dream-practitioner 
promptly dismissed his patient ; and instead, his 
second self became a criminal, who was condemned 
to a shower bath. The real physician arrived in 
the midst of the bath ; and the patient was in- 
duced to go to bed and to sleep. There were no 
after-effects the next morning ; and he was able 
to recall the intense realism of his acting dream 
and the splendor of his visions. 

I add, to reenforce the picture of such toxic 
dreams, the following narration of an early French 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 257 

experimenter, Dr. Moreau : " I saw in my chest 
the hasheesh I had eaten as an emerald glistening 
with millions of tiny sparks. My eyelashes elon- 
gated, rolling like golden threads on small ivory 
wheels turning of themselves with astonishing 
speed." He saw curious creatures, half plant and 
half human, one of which addressed him in Ital- 
ian, which the power of the drug turned into Span- 
ish ; yet during this fairy-play he was aware that 
his own answers to the imaginary conversation 
were fairly rational, and related to the gossip of 
the theatre and literature. In another vision, he 
passed his hand through his hair and immediately 
felt thousands of insects devouring his head. 
Then the vision was transformed : " In an atmos- 
phere vaguely luminous, there fluttered with a 
ceaseless motion millions of butterflies, whose 
wings vibrated like fans. Huge flowers with 
crystal calices, enormous passeroses, with centres 
of gold and silver, rose and spread themselves 
before me with a whizzing like that of artificial 
fireworks." 

The last experience emphasizes the visual pre- 
dominance of the dream-appearances, a trait that 
reaches its most characteristic and brilliant expres- 
sion in the drug-intoxication of mescal, a Mexican 
preparation. 

Mr. Havelock Ellis has contributed to our 
knowledge of the psychology of this drug. In his 
own case, he experienced in the exciting stage 
a sense of energy and of intellectual power, but 
presently became faint and unsteady, and lay 



258 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

down, though still able to read. He noted that a 
pale violet shadow seemed to float over the page, 
and that objects not in the direct line of vision 
became obtrusive and heightened in color; and 
presently a kaleidoscopic shifting, a constant play 
of brilliant color and symmetrical form, took the 
centre of the stage, remaining distinct, but becom- 
ing more and more indescribable as the evening 
progressed. At one time there appeared " a vast 
field of golden jewels, studded with red and green 
stones, ever changing." The air seemed flushed 
with vague perfume, and the visions, ever novel, 
kept on approaching and receding. " I would see 
thick, glorious fields of jewels, solitary or clus- 
tered, sometimes brilliant and sparkling, some- 
times with a dull rich glow. Then they would 
spring up into flower-like shapes beneath my gaze, 
and then seem to turn into gorgeous butterfly- 
forms or endless folds of glistening, iridescent, 
fibrous wings of wonderful insects; while some- 
times I seemed to be gazing into a vast hollow 
revolving vessel, on whose polished concave 
mother-of-pearl surface the hues were swiftly 
changing." The central theme was ever that of 
a highly elaborated color-play, not definitely sug- 
gestive of any real objects, but one in which the 
impressiveness of the mere sensation was domi- 
nant, and persisted with undiminished brilliance 
for hours. 

There was no desire to sleep, and though Mr. 
Ellis could obtain these effects with his eyes open, 
they were more brilliant when viewed with the 
eyes closed. He was able to take a critical view 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 259 

of his visions, to look about for similes to put 
them into words, to note that they reminded him 
of insects' wings, exquisite porcelain, elaborate 
sweetmeats, Maori architecture, Cairo filigree 
work, to comment upon the aesthetic value of the 
color combinations and upon the lovely and vari- 
ous textures, fibrous, woven, polished, glowing, 
dull, veined, semi-transparent. 

An artistic friend who subjected himself to the 
same influence confirmed the glory of the mescal 
color-dream, the silent and sudden illumination of 
the commonplace objects about him, — a gas jet 
that sent forth flashes of color, a cigarette-box of 
violet hue, that shone like an amethyst, his cloth- 
ing, that, as he touched it, would burst into flames. 
Other experimenters record certain organic sen- 
sations, — a feeling of heaviness of the limbs, — 
of faintness and nausea. In some cases the visions 
are more definite and relate to real objects, yet 
objects transformed in the glowing medium of 
color. One inquirer records that the back of his 
head seemed to open and to emit a colored light; 
another, upon taking a cup of coffee, seemed to 
see an arm reaching toward him out of space, — 
an arm separated from its body, and decked in 
glowing rainbow-hues ; while in placing a piece 
of biscuit in his mouth, the interior seemed illu- 
minated like the Blue Grotto at Capri. 

Dr. Weir Mitchell's experiences describe more 
clearly how the color waves and patches and forms 
develop into objects of definite shape and charac- 
ter. From mere points of light and fragments of 



260 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

stained-glass windows, "the display became sug- 
gestive of swelling clouds, always brilliant in color, 
and then their place was taken by more definite 
appearances." "A white spear of grey stone grew 
up to a huge height, and became a tall, richly 
finished Gothic tower of very elaborate and defi- 
nite design, with many rather worn statues stand- 
ing in the doorways or on stone brackets. As I 
gazed, every projecting angle, cornice, and even 
the face of the stones at their joinings were by 
degrees covered or hung with clusters of what 
seemed to be huge precious stones, but uncut, 
some being more like masses of transparent fruit. 
. . . As I looked and it lasted long, the tower 
became of a fine mouse hue, and everywhere the 
vast pendent masses of emerald green, ruby reds, 
and orange began to drip a slow rain of colours. 
All this while nothing was at rest a moment. The 
balls of colour moved tremulously. The tints 
became dull, and then, at once, past belief vivid ; 
the architectural lines were all active with shift- 
ing tints. The figures moving, shook the long, 
hanging lines of living light, and then, in an 
instant, all was dark." 

To these accounts should be added some de- 
scription of the equally variable mental experi- 
ences under alcohol intoxication. The phenomena 
of the lighter stages of such mental alteration are 
familiar, and their points of analogy with the 
more unusual transformations of opium, hasheesh, 
or mescal will be appreciated without minute com- 
parison. It will be sufficient to recall that under 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 261 

a mildly exciting alcoholic dose, the flow of ideas 
is moderately stimulated ; and in susceptible indi- 
viduals the stage of relaxed control is easily 
reached. It may be nothing more than a confi- 
dential attitude, a loss of reserve, and a freer flow 
of spirits than would be consistent with the nor- 
mal character. With increasing action of the 
poisoning, the delicacy of motor coordination is 
clearly affected, most sensitively in the expression 
of the muscles controlling speech, and in the deli- 
cate adjustments of eye and hand ; while in still 
deeper, more protracted, and more abnormal in- 
toxication, hallucinations and enforced trains of 
ideas of a delirious type take possession of what 
is temporarily a disordered mind. 

The hallucinations of this alcoholic delirium 
have been well characterized by Dr. Clarke : " Less 
imaginative than those of opium, less royal than 
those of Indian hemp, they endow ordinary scenes 
and objects with life, and with life which is often 
ridiculous, sometimes tragic, and always vulgar. 
Lying on his bed, the victim of delirium tremens 
converts the rude pictures of his papered walls 
into a living and active panorama, transforming 
its irregular lines into crawling snakes and creep- 
ing things, its shadows into hobgoblins, and all 
about him into strange shapes. In the movement 
of his bedclothes, he sees the plunging of unnat- 
ural animals, giants in busts and plaster casts, and 
the face of a devil in the countenance of his wife ; 
he hears the cries of the damned in the voices of 



262 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

his children ; and surrounds himself with scenes 
of unutterable horror, the distortions or carica- 
tures of his surroundings." 

While these deepest alterations of an excessive 
alcoholic intoxication — and most characteristi- 
cally in cases of confirmed and accumulative 
poisoning — approach even more nearly than do 
the similar results of opium indulgence to the 
pronounced disorders of insanity, yet in the milder 
doses, the action of alcohol upon the nervous sys- 
tem affects the most direct and gradual abeyance 
of the higher executive centres. This, indeed, is 
its distinctive contribution to the psychology of 
drug-intoxication ; and in so far as so much of 
our rationally controlled conduct involves con- 
stant regulation and suppression of impulses ex- 
pressive of our nature, it follows that a partial 
release of these may bring to light, like the self- 
revelations of dreams, phases of character as truly 
belonging to the personality as those that are 
allowed to emerge in a complexly circumscribed 
life. The recognition of this relation has appeared 
in popular sentiment from the Roman in vino 
Veritas down to its various modern paraphrases. 
Of such import is De Quincey's suggestion that 
a man is disguised by sobriety rather than by in- 
toxication ; and Professor James gives the psy- 
chological touch to the dictum in this contrast : 
" Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no ; 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 263 

drunkenness expands, invites, and says yes." By 
its expansion it releases the restraints of logic, over- 
rides the limitations of convention, frees from an 
earth-bound reality ; it invites to an indulgence of 
natural impulses, to unrestrained imagination, to a 
sojourn in a world of abandon and irresponsibility. 
Though the freedom it affirms may require the sac- 
rifice of reason and propriety, and the pleasures it 
solicits are not of the highest, yet the snares that 
it sets for moral frailty should not interfere with 
the correct appraisal of its psychological efficacy. 
It points out with peculiar emphasis how naturally, 
with even slight release of watchful guidance, 
comes the tendency to see things as fancy would 
have them, to forsake hard-gained distinctions of 
truth and error, of subjective and objective, of 
thought and dreaming. It affords scope to the 
freer expression of deeper relations and natural 
motives, among them the primitive, subconsciously 
impressed traits of our character. 

The argument enforced by the survey of these 
variant forms of abnormal dreaming may be thus 
passed in review. When by some seduction of the 
brain we effect an altered type of consciousness, 
we seem at once to induce a flow of ideas more 
nearly approaching that of the dream-movement. 
The manner of such approach is variable, and 
divides most markedly at the point that permits or 
withdraws intercourse with the outside world, that 



264 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

continues or disturbs the orientation of the self in 
its present environment, that allows or interferes 
with the assimilation of progressive experience, and 
conducts these with an alertness of mind that 
commands endowment and training, and leaves an 
available vestige in the memory-continuum of our 
personal growth. Whether the altered type of con- 
sciousness finds its place on one side or the other 
of this boundary, it leaves room for a considera- 
ble variety of further distinctive modifications. 
Though the drugged mind may remain awake, or 
partly so, it reveals its abnormality by projecting 
into the world of actuality (though it may be with 
adequate awareness of the fact) the creations of 
the excited fancy. Such creations may be most 
specific in type, such as the color-orgies of mescal, 
the sordid terrors of confirmed alcoholism, or the 
expansive elaborations of hasheesh. Moreover, 
when the outer world vanishes and inner reflection 
remains, a slight persisting responsiveness of the 
dormant senses offers a sensible starting-point for 
the seemingly motiveless vagaries. Thus, whether 
decidedly removed from normal orientation or from 
correct interpretation of the messages that are 
brought to the mind, a considerable proportion of 
the qualities of the actual self endure to shape 
both the waking thoughts and the sleeping dreams 
of the altered consciousness. Throughout the 
modifications the dreamer is thrown back upon his 



THE VARIANTS OF DREAM-CONSCIOUSNESS 265 

natural resources, and reacts individually and in 
conformity with his endowment and experience, to 
the release of normal relations that the psychic poi- 
sons effect. In what measure these diverse yet 
not unrelated changes are determined by a differ- 
ent mode of entry, a different participation of the 
subconscious phases of our thinking and dreaming, 
cannot for the moment be more explicitly set forth 
than already appears in the descriptive evidence. 
Its more systematic appraisal and more theoretic 
interpretation will presently occupy the focus of 
our attention. 



IV 

THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 

The spontaneous alterations of consciousness and 
the direct induction of allied states through a spe- 
cific disturbance of the brain have yielded their 
measure of contribution to the natural history of 
the subconscious. We turn to other and differ- 
ently significant phases of abnormal mental pro- 
cedure. The introduction of a more artificial, 
more intrinsically experimental type of inquiry 
discloses varieties of divergent psychic experi- 
ences that promise further enlightenment of our 
central problem. Our previous venture has been 
akin to that of the botanist, who determines how 
nature modifies the growth of plants under im- 
posed conditions of light and nurture ; the pursuit 
upon which we enter more nearly resembles the 
express variation of fruit or flower in accordance 
with an end of our own choosing. We administer 
a whiff of ether or a dose of opium, and observe 
how the mind behaves under the specific ex- 
citement ; we are now to profit by related yet 
more artificial issues, by setting them to solve 
queries of our own devising, taking our clue in 
this pursuit from the contributions of similar 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 267 

import provided by nature in the vicissitudes o£ 
deviation and disorder. 

Of conditions conforming to this status the 
most familiar is somnambulism. As a modification 
or accident of sleep, it presents an altered dispo- 
sition of brain-functioning, whereby a part of the 
mental machinery is set into action without arous- 
ing the rest. The mental condition of the som- 
nambulist is an interesting one, and not so much 
for what it leads him to do, as for his attitude 
and sensibilities while thus occupied. He is mani- 
festly not wholly awake ; his senses respond to a 
peculiarly circumscribed range of stimuli, and his 
actions make no report to that phase of conscious- 
ness upon which his waking memory depends. 
Unmistakable circumstantial proof falls short of 
completely convincing him that it was he who 
performed in sleep the versatile achievements that 
the normal memory so completely repudiates, for 
the very reason that the sleep-acting self is not the 
self — not the complete self — that conducts the 
introspective inquiry. 

The objective evidence is fortunately quite 
definite. There is in the older literature the record 
of a sleep-walker whose inquiring friends tested 
his powers while engaged in his nocturnal excur- 
sions. With a restricted type of awareness, he 
saw and felt and recognized familiar objects, and 
behaved toward them in routine, partly intelligent 
fashion. If a pipe were placed in his hands, the 



268 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

somnambulist handled it correctly, but could not 
light it ; if it were lighted for him, the pipe went 
out because he did not inhale properly. He could 
be induced to sit at a table and to go through the 
actual movements of writing. If given a book, he 
turned its pages, resting his gaze on each page, but 
without reading ; and he continued in this auto- 
matic mimicry if the light were withdrawn. When 
forcibly aroused, he was shocked to find himself 
out of bed and in the presence of his friends. 
Had he awakened of his own accord, he might, 
with equal suddenness, have come to himself and 
without memory of his immediate occupation. 

Dr. Hammond found similar opportunity to 
observe a confirmed somnambulist, — a young 
woman, — who arose, dressed, walked slowly and 
deliberately, with eyes open in a fixed stare, found 
her way from her bedroom to the parlor below, 
and there scratched a match (which she had 
brought with her) against the under side of the 
mantel-shelf, waited until it caught fire, turned 
on and lighted the gas, and flung herself into a 
chair, gazing with rapt absorption at a portrait of 
her mother that hung above the mantel. Her 
eyes did not wink when threatened, not even when 
the cornea was touched. When a book was placed 
between them and the portrait, she took no notice 
of the obstacle. A burning sulphur match held 
under her nose aroused no response ; and a bit of 
bread saturated with quinine, that was forced into 
her mouth (and which presently she chewed and 
swallowed), failed equally to arouse any reaction. 
Upon her own initiative she arose and paced the 
room, sobbing and weeping violently. While thus 
excited she was led back to her chair, to which 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 269 

procedure she offered no resistance, and again 
became composed. Banging two books together, 
pulling her hair, pinching her face, tickling the 
sole of her foot, — the last followed by laughter 
and a withdrawal of the foot, — failed to awaken 
her. When at length awakened by violent shak- 
ing, she was startled to realize her situation, and 
had no recollection either of her actions or of 
any dream that may have aroused them. 

Observations of this general import have been 
sufficiently verified to establish that the somnam- 
bulist is suggestible ; that to some extent an appeal 
to his senses arouses appropriate response ; that 
he, in part, appreciates the felt and seen positions 
and nature of things; and that his reactions, 
though automatic, reflect a simply intelligent yet 
limited adaptation to routine situations. They 
show further that spontaneously he takes cogni- 
zance only of that particular area of sensations 
and movements that fits in with his self-imposed 
quest. The somnambulist, bent upon finding a 
lost object, avoids obstacles, manipulates latches 
and locks and keys and doors and drawers, finds 
the proper material in the kitchen for washing 
dishes or baking a pie, but is insensitive to the 
happenings about him, does not hear or see the 
person who, with lighted candle, is approaching to 
awaken him, and is likely to stumble against any 
unfamiliar object, and unintelligently to fumble 
about the knob of the door that, without his 



270 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

knowledge, has been locked to prevent his escape. 
Thus thwarted in his purpose, he may wander 
back to bed without awakening ; yet a sufficiently 
violent stimulus breaks through the narrow circle 
of his contracted perceptions, and brings him to 
normal wakefulness. Many a somnambulist who 
is aware of his failing, and who has found it una- 
vailing to lock the door and to hide the key (the 
nocturnal consciousness being quite equal both to 
securing the key and to opening the door), has 
resorted to the expedient of dropping the key 
into a basin of cold water, relying upon the 
shock, when the sleeper's hands were plunged 
into the water, to awaken him. This group of 
possibilities and limitations of mental behavior 
sufficiently establishes the close affiliation of nat- 
ural somnambulism to other conditions, and espe- 
cially to hypnosis, and indicates that what they 
have distinctively in common is the general type 
of mental disintegration that permits the spon- 
taneous or suggested episode to be enacted without 
sanction or knowledge of the normally directing 
stage-manager. 

The relation thus indicated must be modified 
in one detail : by showing that the memory of the 
sleep-walking conduct is not completely effaced, 
but may be awakened by suitable suggestion when 
the mind again reverts to a similar condition. There 
may be cited the adventure of a lady who had 
walked in her sleep upon the roof of a church. Her 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 271 

husband found that when in a natural sleep, she 
would, without awakening, answer queries whis- 
pered in her ear ; and by this means he obtained 
from the sleeper some account of the nocturnal 
excursion, including the confession that in her 
wanderings she had injured her foot by stepping 
on a nail. Upon awakening she was again ques- 
tioned in regard to her foot, acknowledged that it 
pained her, but could not account for the injury. 
There are also authoritative records in accord 
with the common belief that somnambulists, who 
in sleep have hidden objects of value and who 
were quite unable in their waking condition to 
find them, have, in a succeeding night-walking, 
gone directly to the place of concealment. By a 
distinctive type of registry the night-staff of the 
brain thus keeps account of its own doings, though 
without reporting to the consciousness in charge 
of its daylight operations. 

It was these familiar characteristics of natural 
somnambulism that a century ago suggested the 
name of " artificial somnambulism " for an ana- 
logous condition induced by a trance-like lapse 
from the normal waking state. This condition 
and its subordinate varieties we now know under 
the term hypnotism, or the state of hypnosis. 
The distinctive phenomena of hypnosis may be 
assumed to be moderately familiar. They are 
readily induced in a susceptible subject, and are 
commonly set forth as the product of suggestion. 
Unquestionably the increased suggestibility is a 
fundamental and conspicuous trait of the hyp- 



272 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

notized subject ; and the annals of hypnotism 
recount the endless variety of simple, unusual, 
and seemingly impossible performances which this 
increased power of response imparts to a sen- 
sitive nervous system, whose functional relations 
have been shunted from their accustomed gear- 
ings. The " suggestion " theory of hypnotism has 
done an important service in emphasizing that the 
clue to the phenomena is to be found in the re- 
sponsive condition of the subject ; but it is equally 
important not to overlook that this increased sug- 
gestibility is itself to be accounted for. It forms 
but one among several distinctive traits of the 
hypnotic condition. While it is obvious that the 
hypnotic subject enters a peculiarly altered men- 
tal state upon the occasion of an outward sugges- 
tion, it is equally important to note that the 
central interest is in the comprehension of the 
abnormal psychological disposition thus induced. 
We are naturally interested in the range of per- 
formances that the responsive subject may be led 
to exhibit ; but we must bear in mind that these 
reflect only in slight measure the natural issue of 
his inner impulses, and that it is more enlightening 
to penetrate beyond the observable reactions to 
the subjective attitude that renders them possible. 
What such an analytic inquiry establishes as a 
distinctive trait of the hypnotic disposition — and 
a closely parallel statement holds of natural som- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 273 

nambulism — is a disintegration or partitioning of 
consciousness, and with it a contraction of the 
mental field. It is manifest that the subject is 
not fully awake, and clearly not asleep in the 
ordinary manner ; certain divisions of his func- 
tional powers may be aroused to a specific man- 
ner of response, although this very response is 
determined by the abeyance of others. Further- 
more, the actions thus performed are peculiarly 
registered ; in typical cases they are forgotten or 
ignored by the normal self, though a succeeding 
phase of hypnotic consciousness readily recalls its 
previous conduct. For this restricted and dis- 
jointed type of consciousness a special term, that 
shall be definite without incurring too pronounced 
an obligation to any theory, is desirable, indeed, 
indispensable. Let it be called a dissociated con- 
sciousness, allowing the term dissociation to ac- 
quire such derivative and expanding meaning as 
the nature of the phenomena in which it enters 
consistently demands. 

An outline of the typical hypnotic reactions 
must suffice ; the considerable deviations in the 
kind of altered state that differently constituted 
nervous systems favor can be but casually con- 
sidered. 1 Owing to some turn or twist of the 

i Hypnotic states differ in the degree to which the normal func- 
tions are disabled or " side-tracked," as well as to the kind or 
direction of alteration that ensues. When applied to the lighter 



274 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

mental machinery, the nervous system of the 
hypnotized subject responds in a disordered and 
defective manner to the several ranges of stimuli 
that normally arouse response. Negatively there is 
a limitation of awareness and of will ; there is 
a restricted scope of consciousness, a hampered 
expression of initiative and resistance, — the limi- 
tations of the two reducing the subject to the sem- 
blance of a remarkably intricate automaton. The 
actions of this psychological automaton do not 
report to the normal consciousness ; and, as a con- 
sequence, in the record of that consciousness the 
hypnotic behavior finds no place. The limitation 
of the field of awareness is such that perceptions 
enter and are responded to upon conditions curi- 
ously different from those of the normal state. 
Yet this distinctive mode of response reflects the 
individuality of the subject, is dominated by the 
accumuated powers of assimilation that charac- 

stages or the lesser divergences from the normal, the description 
remains apposite in outline, though it must be toned down in 
detail. Just how far the proneness to enter this state may be 
regarded as an abnormal disposition may be left undecided. It is 
probable, however, that persons presenting certain slight or pro- 
nounced mental anomalies may by virtue thereof be disposed to 
enter the hypnotic state. This is notably true of the perplexing 
varieties of the hysterical constitution ; in these cases it is some- 
times difficult to determine what is the expression of the hypnotic 
and what of the hysterical deviations from normality. These sev- 
eral shades and grades of the hypnotic susceptibility must be 
properly valued in formulating a suitable conception of its status 
and significance. 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 275 

terize his normal personality, and presents indu- 
bitable evidence of some subtle participation of 
his normal consciousness, — all this, however, 
complexly modified by the acute responsiveness to 
certain preferred solicitations of word and situa- 
tion, that constitute his complex suggestibility. 

I assume the role of the experimenter, and by 
any of the customary procedures — let it be an 
intense and strained fixation of the subject's eyes, 
or a passive emptying of his mind, as he yields 
himself to my control — I facilitate in the favor- 
able subject the altered mental attitude to which 
his participation brings the critical transforma- 
tion. If left alone, there may be mere vacancy, 
passivity, sleep, with a confused or sharp relapse 
to wakefulness. If I at once occupy the altered 
consciousness by direct and forcible suggestion, 
I find that the ideas implanted by me — like the 
self-imposed charge of the sleep-walker — take 
stronger hold upon the motor channels of his 
nervous system and upon his thought-progression 
than do his dormant sel£-assertiveness and indi- 
vidual initiative, or even the natural automatic 
control of muscles and senses. It is as though his 
servants were by some sympathetic insight made 
to recognize the momentary incapacity of their 
master and to obey the command of a temporary 
authority, yet with some reservation, with an un- 
dercurrent of concern for the interests of their 
true lord. My fiat overrides any lingering resist- 
ance of his to the foreign invasion, and utilizes 
his accumulated resources to carry out my caprice; 
and presently there is more and more complete 



276 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

surrender, and I play upon his stops as upon a 
pipe. I clinch his hands about my cane and insist 
that he cannot release his hold ; I seat him upon 
a chair and command that he cannot arise ; and 
every impulse of his struggles is at once shorn of 
its purpose by the counter-command of my im- 
posed suggestion. I place a great ball of lead in 
his hand and assure him that it is hollow and of 
paper, and he lifts it as though it were a trifle. 
I give him a poker and a footstool, and say, 
" Here is a brush and a comb," and he performs 
his toilet with my preposterous substitutes. I 
take him upon a walk through field and forest — 
all in the confines of my study — and show him 
the stream — the hearth rug — across which he 
is to jump, while I applaud his efforts from the 
opposite bank. He shivers when my word lowers 
the temperature of his fictitious world, and swel- 
ters a moment later when my weather predictions 
announce a hot wave. He hears church-bells in 
the clinking of my bunch of keys, sees whatever 
I choose to describe, and ignores with eye and 
hand what I declare non-existent. Clay in the 
potter's hand is his exalted suggestibility in the 
service of my ingenuity. 

It is well, however, for the potter not to toy 
with his material, but to shape it to useful forms. 
The hypnotized mind may be enticed to exhibit 
quite a range of initiative, and to show therein 
the allegiance to the normal personality. I need 
only leave a certain indefiniteness in my sugges- 
tions, — to set the theme, but commit the rendition 
to the skill of the performer. I suggest that there 
is music and that he is at church ; he reports that 
he hears the peals of the organ or the refrain of 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 277 

a hymn, possibly identifying the words and tune. 
Upon another occasion, I again arouse the strains 
of music, but place them on the stage of a vaude- 
ville performance ; and the subject enjoys the 
gayety of " rag-time," or of a topical song. He 
carries out the situation, just as my dreaming self 
sets upon the mental theatre its own dramati- 
zation of the meagre plot furnished by a sensory 
hint from without or by a chance play of imagery 
from within. Possibly, renewed suggestion will 
be needed to stimulate the handicapped mind to 
maintain its constructive energies. The hypno- 
tized brain may carry out the suggestion in its 
curtest form, relapsing into dull automatism when 
once the irritation is spent, — an issue sugges- 
tive of the behavior of a pigeon deprived of its 
brain-hemispheres by the inquiring physiologist. 
Between these opposing tendencies the ever-pre- 
sent individual variation determines the manner 
of response to the impulses that by external sug- 
gestion have found lodgment in the unresisting 
brain. In favorable subjects, the suggested ac- 
tivity may be pursued spontaneously to an indefi- 
nite extent ; the hypnotized political orator takes 
the stump and harangues the imaginary crowd for 
period after period, assuming the manner, diction, 
and arguments suitable to the proletariat ; the 
hypnotic actor, furnished with the mere skeleton 
of a situation, throws himself into the part with 
an abandon and realism equally surprising and 
amusing to his friends. 

Yet all this is equally as important upon the side 
of its limitations as of its success. The hypnotic 



278 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

accomplishment clearly excels in some respects 
that of the normal powers ; but it is the exhibition 
of these same powers peculiarly exalted, set free 
by the banishment of restraining standards of 
thought and conduct. Give the hypnotic subject 
a task congenial to his talents, possibly one ap- 
pealing to a private, even an unsuspected passion 
suppressed in his work-a-day activity, and you 
marvel at the inspiration ; engage his energies in 
a direction foreign to his interests and experi- 
ence, and you find the result dull and banal. 
Present half a dozen subjects with a cigar in the 
form of a lead-pencil, and with a toothpick as a 
match, and you may shrewdly guess from their 
enacting of the part which are the smokers and 
which not ; though you may be deceived by the 
skill of the mimicry that assimilates by observa- 
tion alone the minute realism of such a piece of 
" stage business." Throughout, the series remains 
consistent with the full range — not merely the 
consciously acknowledged range — of the individ- 
ual's capacities. Hypnotism begets no Minerva- 
born creations ; it acts as does the allied alcoholic 
stimulant, of which Schiller observed, " Der Wein 
erfindet nichts, er schwcltzt war aus." 

Receptivity to an imposed suggestion, a mark- 
edly lowered resistance and independence, an 
equally marked contraction of the field of assimi- 
lation, a release from the restraining influences of 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 279 

fear, hesitation, and the ideals of reason and pro- 
priety, an automatic tendency to continue with an 
occupation until the energy is spent or diverted 
to another channel, and yet withal a variable 
initiative, a personal moulding of the set theme, 
— these are the more general traits of the hyp- 
notic consciousness. They will presently be sup- 
plemented by more specific embodiments of these 
relations, that are equally significant, equally diffi- 
cult to disentangle from the confusing mass of 
discerning and undiscerning observations. 

In conformity to the mode of approach that 
was found profitable in preceding analyses, the 
hypnotic consciousness may be examined in terms 
of its limitations of awareness and of will. What 
kinds of perception, what manner of thought- 
elaboration, what avenues of expression, does the 
hypnotic consciousness command ? To begin with, 
the consciousness is contracted, narrowed in scope, 
and, it may be, lowered in energy ; moreover, it is 
systematically limited, with a method in its seeming 
caprice. As in normal assimilation under guiding 
interests, it sends forth its apperceptive tentacles, 
gathering only what is germane to the suggested 
quest ; but its appetite is peculiarly selective. It 
presents the paradox of perforce recognizing that 
which it ignores, of determining what shall enter 
consciousness by being blind to what it excludes, 
while yet it takes note of the very "ear-marks" 



280 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

that arouse its rejection. Yet this is a bit of mental 
jugglery of which the normal consciousness, with 
a slight concession to the polite fictions of the 
social exigencies, is equally capable. When Ma- 
dame is not at home to any but a few privileged 
callers, she is sufficiently at home to the others to 
recognize at all events that they are not the ones 
to whom she is at home ; and when Madame 
" cuts " her rival or a too presuming acquaintance, 
she is most particularly aware of the detailed 
appearance of the snubbed individual, whom she 
does not see. Doubtless in the privacy of the 
boudoir, Madame describes to her confidante the 
precise variety of discomfiture which the object 
of her social displeasure suffered at her hands, 
and herself realizes how keenly her consciousness 
was affected by the unwelcome presence. Yet in 
pressing the analogy, it is proper to admit at once 
that the manner of intercourse between the private, 
examining, and confessing self and the dress- 
parade, social self is more intimate, and is differ- 
ently conducted, than that which obtains between 
the normal and the hypnotized personalities. 

To illustrate : I suggest to my subject that he 
cannot see the letter a. He reads aloud or copies 
from a text, or writes me a note, and consistently 
omits all the a's, and necessarily recognizes them 
in order to omit them. In spite of firm denial 
on his part that there is no a present, I have 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 281 

indisputable evidence that in some sense lie sees 
and knows (though not precisely as I see and 
know it, because his apperceptive mechanism is 
not acting normally, as mine is) that the a's are 
all present in their proper places. His being 
not at home to the a's no more convinces me that 
he is wholly unaware of their solicitations to his 
notice, than the maid's announcement convinces 
the denied visitor of Madame's virtual and bodily 
absence from the house. Social convention toler- 
ates the one fiction as readily as the deranged 
hypnotic organism tolerates the other. Let us 
complicate the situation just a little. Another 
subject is told that my friend, of whose presence 
she had been duly made aware, will disappear as 
soon as I clap my hands. The escamotage is suc- 
cessful. My friend may shout in her ear, block 
her path as she walks, pinch her arms, all without 
effect ; he and his actions do not exist for her 
consciousness. My friend offers her a rose or 
places his hat upon his head and walks about the 
room. When her attention is called to these objects, 
she remarks upon the rose mysteriously appearing 
in space, and upon the hat promenading with- 
out visible support. I announce the approaching 
revisibility of my friend, and when I again clap 
my hands the hat and rose are seen in their true 
relations. 

It thus appears that not merely the existence 
of a gap, but of what is needed to fill it, is pre- 
sent in some sense, though clearly not in the usual 
sense, to the hypnotized consciousness. Suppose 
that instead of rendering the subject mentally 



282 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

blind to a given object, I suggest a fictitious addi- 
tion to his experience, or an arbitrary transfor- 
mation of a real object into a wholly different one. 
I impress upon him that a blank card is really 
a photograph of President Roosevelt, that a lion 
has entered the room, and — to repeat former sug- 
gestions — that he hears music amid actual silence, 
or that what his eyes would readily recognize as a 
poker and a footstool, were his senses properly serv- 
ing him, are to be accepted as a brush and comb. 
Are the imaginary sounds and sights truly hal- 
lucinated, and only the suggested, not the real ob- 
jects seen and felt ? Assuredly not ; there is just 
the same subtle paradox as before. Some portion 
of the mental organism recognizes the unreality, 
the peculiar subjective tissue of the lion and the 
photograph, and takes cognizance of the things 
that are not what they seem ; yet it does this so 
feebly, so suppressedly, that the momentarily dom- 
inant hypnotic consciousness receives no report 
thereof, but is emphatically convinced of the real- 
ity of the lion and the " brushness " of the foot- 
stool. Of this state of affairs there are various 
though reluctant witnesses, whom we may summon 
by such psychological writs as we can enforce. 

To appreciate the bearing of this evidence, we 
must widen our survey of hypnotic phenomena, 
and include particularly the valuable contribu- 
tions of the post-hypnotic suggestion, — a term 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 283 

that indicates the execution, in the waking condi- 
tion, of the suggestion that was implanted while 
in hypnosis. This transfers the entire situation to 
a more nearly normal status ; and such post-hyp- 
notic suggestions may equally influence sensation, 
motion, and the associative elaboration. Before 
awakening my subject I suggest that, on coming 
to himself, or thereafter when I cough three times, 
he will fetch a vase from the mantel and set it 
upon the table ; or that he will light a lamp, 
though it is broad daylight ; or raise an umbrella 
indoors ; and these several actions will be accom- 
panied with varying degrees of resistance or hesi- 
tation. I can equally substitute in this post-hyp- 
notic relapse a fictitious for a real sensation, or 
for the moment destroy sections of normal aware- 
ness, and induce him to speak or act with so much 
of reason or the lack of it as I introduce into the 
imposed task. 

The post-hypnotic reaction points more defi- 
nitely to the status of the hypnotic limitation of 
awareness, and assimilates it to the standard types 
of restricted consciousness. Some observers regard 
it as justifiable to assume that during the carrying 
out of the suggestion the subject relapses into the 
hypnotic state ; others point out that there is at 
that moment a real awareness of the imposed pro- 
cedure, — an awareness the more decided as the 
act is carried out with greater hesitation, — that 



284 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the subject assimilates it as best be can, as a sort 
of forced intrusion into the normal sequence of 
thought. If we ask him why he did so purpose- 
less an act as to open an umbrella indoors, we 
rarely get any more satisfactory answer than that 
it was necessary to his peace of mind to do this 
thing. He may be ignorant of the fact that the 
source of this impulse came from without j though 
subjects frequently exposed to this type of sug- 
gestion come to recognize the hypnotic origin of 
impulses that possess such peculiar urgency. When 
suggestions are carried out after long intervals of 
weeks and months, and involve the subconscious 
retention of some organic tally of the passing 
days, they contribute still more striking evidence 
of the hold which this charge upon the subcon- 
scious registration may secure. As illustrations of 
the scope and intricacy of subconscious action, all 
these experiences are of interest. What they 
more distinctively contribute to the varieties of 
conscious states is that these post-hypnotic actions 
leave some trace in the waking memory, while if 
performed during hypnosis, they would be wholly 
ignored by the normal consciousness. And again : 
that actions thus performed — possibly with some 
hesitation and self-persuasion — are regarded as 
the subject's own conduct, as expressive of his 
own will, may indeed be explained and excused as 
the outcome of deliberate reflection. 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 285 

The conclusion favored by these relations seems 
to be that actions consciously performed will be 
regarded as voluntary and spontaneous so long as 
there is no awareness of the imposed motive. The 
awareness that enters into the completely and nor- 
mally voluntary action combines two procedures : 
the one of the actual performance, and the other 
of the deliberations, impulses, and intentions 
that precede it. The action performed under an 
imposed suggestion during complete hypnosis can- 
not acquire either of these requisites, because the 
waking, introspectively alert consciousness is so 
nearly unaware of the action in any sense. But 
the post-hypnotic action ignores or mistakes only 
the latter, the antecedent initiative, and by its 
concomitant awareness of the action as performed, 
saves the personal flavor of the whole. Thus the 
subject whom I hypnotize while he is seated on a 
chair, and who then performs at my bidding all 
sorts of acrobatic feats, but is again seated and 
awakened, will maintain that he never left the 
chair ; but in the post-hypnotic state the subject 
is aware that he has raised the umbrella, and, as 
noted, may try to invent some plausible excuse 
for his folly. 1 

1 This is not always, but it is frequently the case ; also is it 
possible by suggestion to bring about almost any desired relation 
of remembering and forgetting while awake of what was done 
in the hypnotic condition. In such instances, it is plausible to sup- 



'286 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

An interpretation of this complex status must 
not be hastily reached. It clearly represents a 
peculiar type of intercourse between the waking, 
normal, fully alert consciousness and the con- 
tracted, abnormal, selectively functioning con- 
sciousness. Both types are for the post-hypnotic 
moment acting jointly ; both utilize the same 
sense-organs, the same muscles, the same endow- 
ment and experience ; and yet each apparently 
ignores the presence of the other; so that one 
seems driven to the hypothesis of a divided self, 
— of some alternating, though in part cohabit- 
ing, tenancy by two systems of memories, of the 
expression of two different wills. The critical 
examination of this easy supposition will occupy 
us in detail in later analyses. For the present it 
is well not to exceed the warrant of the data, and 
to note the varying relations of memory-aware- 
ness and the sense of initiative that accompanies 
the performances of hypnotized subjects both in 
hypnosis and post-hypnotically. 

The first step in the comprehension of this puz- 
zling relation is to observe that what the waking 
self ignores again enters the field of awareness 
when the subject is once more hypnotized, pos- 

pose that the ensuing condition may be an intermediate one, offer- 
ing possibilities of intercourse both with the normally alert and 
with the hypnotized consciousness. Such a transitional state — 
which may be the state of the post-hypnotic action — is sometimes 
described as a hypnoid condition. 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 287 

sibly even after a long interval. The induction 
of the same state brings with it a command of 
the experiences and memories of previous similar 
states. Spontaneous analogies thereto we have 
found in natural somnambulism, in which the 
whereabouts of an object hidden during sleep is 
lost to the waking self, but is directly accessible 
during a following attack of somnambulism. Just 
so the hypnotized subject, who assures me while 
awake that he had never left his chair, reports to 
me when I again hypnotize him the entire series 
of suggestions to which I subjected his helpless 
will; and yet this is but one, though the read- 
iest, way of exacting confession from the sup- 
pressed consciousness. I may suggest that what 
the alert consciousness ordinarily ignores will 
upon a second awakening he recalled ; and I can 
elicit convincing evidence that the apparently 
lost impressions have actually been registered in 
the nervous system. The difficulty is merely to 
devise the proper formulae to render visible the 
record thus written in characters that escape atten- 
tion. 

Naturally, the proofs from spontaneous arrange- 
ments are more convincing than those in which di- 
rect suggestion has entered. I recall an hypnotic 
experiment in which a boy twelve years old was 
induced, while hypnotized, to make a drawing. 
No theme was given, and the result elicited after 
some persuasion was a childish sketch of a house, 



288 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

with windows and a chimney emitting smoke, 
a fence and a gate, and some conventionalized 
trees. The boy was awakened, and, as usual, knew 
nothing of what had occurred. After repeated 
coaxing, he was again induced in his normal state 
to draw something ; and there emerged a fairly 
close replica of the former sketch. When the two 
drawings were shown to the young artist, he was 
decidedly alarmed by their similarity, and could 
not in the least account for his hypnotic effort. 
Hypnotized subjects who have been persuaded to 
write, and possibly to record personal data known 
to no one else, when restored to their normal con- 
dition recognize the handwriting as their own 
and the private facts as their own intimate con- 
fessions, but completely deny any recollection of 
the occasion of writing the document, and are 
amazed to find thus recorded what they would 
not willingly have disclosed. Clearly the hypno- 
tized self draws upon the possessions of the nor- 
mal self, and conversely, the experiences of the 
hypnotized self are assimilated with some depend- 
ence upon the normal relations. That the ner- 
vous system registers similarly in the two cases is 
evidenced by experiments in which the subject 
is given bitter substances to taste with the sug- 
gestion that they are sweet, and while declaring 
them wholly palatable, actually makes grimaces 
that belie the completeness of his delusions. A 
still more delicate experiment shows the tracings 
of the organic effect of such pleasure-and-pain 
sensations upon the pulse and respiration. These 
indicate at the moment of the sensation the same 
type of physiological change as occurs when the 
subject normally is aware that the quinine is bit- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 289 

ter and the vanilla is pleasant. Similarly, if the 
retina of the hypnotized subject be exposed to 
the vision of a bright red cross with the sug- 
gestion that no such cross exists, he will deny all 
evidence of its being there, but will describe the 
dull green after-image — the same as would ap- 
pear in the normal eye that recognizes the red 
cross — that is projected from the excited area of 
his retina. Such registrations, normally taking 
effect with definite report to consciousness, may 
thus take place and yet be paradoxically excluded 
from their natural tendency and privilege. 

In such fashion do the normal senses declare 
the shield to be golden, while the hypnotic con- 
sciousness, using the same eyes, is equally con- 
vinced that it is of silver ; and the solution lies 
in this instance neither in the composition of the 
shield, nor yet in the caprice of the organs of 
vision. The source of the paradox lies more re- 
mote, requires the disentanglement of a more 
complex situation to lay bare its secret. A con- 
tention between the two knights, even in so ob- 
jective an issue, was a ready possibility for the 
sufficient reason that they were two, with two 
pairs of eyes serving as many minds. But whence 
this lack of harmony when but one individual is 
concerned ? Two souls may chance to be occupied 
with but a single thought, but how can one soul 
have a double thought ? As is the case with many 
another enigma of science, the value of the reply 



290 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tliat we elicit will depend upon the fitness of our 
queries. At present it is but one phase of the 
paradox that we need resolve, and that only to 
such extent as to render intelligible and profitable 
our further inquiries. The functional dissolution 
that attends the hypnotic and allied mental altera- 
tions brings it about that the occupations of each 
estate are disqualified from representation in the 
forum of the other, and yet that their common 
dependence upon a joint nervous and mental 
organism requires an efficient, however submerged 
or disallowed, participation of each in the other's 
operations. While the ability to revive the mem- 
ories of former hypnotic doings in a succeeding 
hypnosis does not explain why such transactions 
remain unknown to the intervening normal self, 
it does indicate that they achieve some sort of 
registry, recoverable by an appeal to that phase 
of consciousness that was responsive to the ori- 
ginal experience. How this kind of a divided 
consciousness is most properly to be conceived, 
most fitly to be described, is, in the main, the part 
of the problem that is being deferred to a later 
juncture. Yet the partial disclosure of these signi- 
ficant relations incurs the obligation of seeking 
evidence of their existence not only in recurrent 
hypnotic states, when the normal consciousness 
is in abeyance, but also concomitantly, when that 
phase of our mental nature is at work. 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 291 

The method by which this can be accomplished 
may be called that of indirect suggestion, of in- 
sinuation, or of " forcing." Its dealings are with 
the waking consciousness ; but it takes that con- 
sciousness at a disadvantage ; and it depends for 
its success almost entirely upon the susceptibility 
of the subject to such mental persuasion. A few 
instances will profit more than further analysis. 
I set the hypnotized subject a simple problem : 
to add together 5, 6, 8, and 9. I then awaken 
him, and engage his interest in a game in which 
he is to think of a number and I am to try to 
guess it. I at once guess " 28 ; " and he is aston- 
ished at my astute mind-reading. I have simply 
left the number " 28 " invitingly accessible to 
some phase of his consciousness ; and when the 
apparently free choice of a number is to be made, 
the association takes the path that still shows 
the footprints of the suggested impression. The 
procedure is in a measure a forced association. 
I take the hypnotized subject upon an imagi- 
nary pleasuring ; I tell him he is listening to the 
Toreador's song in " Carmen," which he follows 
mentally with evident gusto, keeping time to the 
suggested measure with characteristic movements 
of the head. I place the scene of the music in a 
concert garden ; I invite him to supper ; and I tell 
him an anecdote that amuses him. He is awak- 
ened, and knows as little as usual of the na- 
ture of my suggestions ; song, supper, and story 
are all gone. Presently, by arrangement, the 
" Carmen " aria is played on a piano in an adjoin- 
ing room ; and I ask him what it brings up in 
his mind. He begins to cite fragments of our 
imaginary excursion, — possibly the scene of the 



292 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

garden, possibly the supper, possibly the story, — 
though crediting the whole to his own imagina- 
tive constructions. Though not payable on de- 
mand, the deposits are none the less made in the 
mental bank, and may be drawn upon through 
diplomatic negotiations. 

This represents one procedure, and the simpler, 
by which the method reveals the unrecognized 
presence of what, though disqualified, yet parti- 
cipates in the mental play. Its limitation lies in 
the fact that I must furnish each situation with 
a plausible setting, so that the issue appears as 
the natural sequence of the ordinary type of self- 
determined motives, while yet my suggestion, 
made behind the scenes, furnishes the actual plot 
to the seeming improvisation. In the affairs of 
the practical life, moral suasion not infrequently 
succeeds by a like artful finesse j we induce oth- 
ers to accord with our measures by seemingly 
letting their actions stand as the issues of their 
own decisions. If we are not tactful, we arouse 
opposition ; our plot is suspected, and an alert 
resistance is aroused. A direct mode of effecting 
the release of the confined impressions requires 
that the insinuated suggestions shall find an 
outlet that is not the chartered highway of con- 
scious concern ; what is wanted is a procedure that 
does not require one to move on tiptoe in fear 
of arousing suspicion, possibly some " back-door " 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 293 

access that may be made available to the purpose 
in hand. 

Again, without explaining how or why such a 
mode of approach is accessible, let us note its 
actual occasional presence and the manner of com- 
munication which it permits with the apartments 
that open upon the highways of mental traffic. 
What is known as " automatic writing " is a pro- 
cedure in which the sense of initiative is lacking, 
in which the mind is but feebly aware of its own 
preparations, in which what is revealed reflects 
sources of information seemingly removed from 
deliberate purpose ; and by these tokens is it 
felt and judged to be different from the reflec- 
tive, voluntary expression that writing normally 
connotes. It occurs spontaneously in " nervous " 
subjects, particularly of the hysterical tempera- 
ment, and indicates some liability to dissociation. 
If my subject can command this mode of expres- 
sion, I proceed as follows : while hypnotized I 
read some verses to him, but give no suggestion 
in regard to them. Upon awakening him, I ask 
him to hold a pencil to paper, and at the same 
time I engage his attention as well as I can in a 
congenial task ; I suggest that if the pencil seems 
animated to write, he let it do so. I remind him 
that while he was hypnotized a moment ago, I was 
reading to him some verses, which he by his own 
confession has forgotten. Yet I leave the impres- 
sion by my talk that I am very much interested 
in knowing how completely the memory-traces 
have vanished ; possibly he can recall how many 
words there were in the first line or in the first 
stanza. Yet I continue with my diversion (let it 



294 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

be reading to him, or having him read an inter- 
esting tale), and presently there is a twitching of 
the hand, and a more and more definite excur- 
sion, until, if the experiment is successful, the 
number is correctly recorded. Or I ask the sub- 
ject, as before, to add together 5, 6, 8, and 9, 
and place a pencil in his hand ; then I suddenly 
awaken him as he begins with 5 ; and though he 
may be momentarily bewildered, the automatic 
pencil records 28. Or possibly it may prove that 
whatever I boldly ask of him, he answers with 
full awareness by word of mouth, while my whis- 
pered queries are responded to by the dissociated 
hand. In all this type of procedure a decided 
measure of mental dissociation is present ; there 
is here an "automatic" and a voluntary channel 
of utterance ; and there is revealed the presence, 
thus dissociated from the normal avenues of 
knowledge, of what the conscious memory can- 
not reach. 

Further instances would add little to the psy- 
chological status thus indicated : first, that typi- 
cally the awakened consciousness after moderately 
profound hypnosis recalls nothing of the thought 
or conduct while hypnotized ; second, that a re- 
gistry thereof is none the less made and in terms 
generically the same as those of normal memory- 
images, both in their direct sensory appeal and in 
their quality as material to enter into experience ; 
third, that in a reentry into a second hypnotic 
phase, the subject, upon direct inquiry, reveals a 
knowledge of the data denied to the waking con- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 295 

sciousness ; fourth, that evidence of these memo- 
ries can be obtained in the waking state by indirect 
means ; e. g. by inducing 1 distraction and securing 
a record in terms of automatic writing, by creat- 
ing a situation in which the subject is asked to 
respond as if by his own initiative, but is "forced" 
into selecting the reply favored by the submerged 
impression, and by other psychological stratagems. 
Consistently, then, do these several phenomena 
obtainable during and after hypnosis of normal 
subjects, indicate a dissociation of consciousness 
in terms of assimilation, of memory, and of expres- 
sion. Impressions achieve registry in one area, 
division, phase, or mode of functioning of con- 
sciousness, but are at the same time ignored by 
the normally dominant information-bureau ; memo- 
ries are lost, but yet by indirect means are lured 
from their retreat ; the tongue denies what the 
hand simultaneously affirms, or in the very man- 
ner of indicating " no " implies a " yes." Such is 
the central, though not the sole contribution that 
an analysis of hypnosis brings to the study of 
the subconscious phases of abnormal mental pro- 
cedure. 

It is by no means a simple problem to determine 
what constitutes the susceptibility to assume the 
hypnotic state ; yet we are within the warrant of 
our evidence in interpreting such predisposition 
to consist intrinsically in a more than normal 



296 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tendency to present spontaneously, or to yield to 
under suggestion, or to acquire by training, some 
measure o£ dissociated consciousness. The com- 
plex o£ mental traits that favors such disposition 
exhibits variety in its membership, and in toto 
presents a considerable range from an easily over- 
come antagonism to high susceptibility, to exag- 
gerated proclivity. 

Let us linger at a few distinctive stages of this 
gradation. If I tell any one of my friends that 
he cannot clinch his hand, he promptly makes a 
fist and affords unmistakable evidence that the 
hand is his to command, and that any movement 
thereof in deference to my request is mere com- 
placency on his part. Very well : I admit the well- 
knit unity and normal adequacy of his control 
upon every ordinary occasion. It is his boat, and 
his hand is on the tiller ; but I ask him to be as 
complacent as possible, to forget about the boat 
as far as he can, and let me take the tiller while 
he keeps his hand upon it. Literally, then, we sit 
down at a table under familiar reposeful surround- 
ings, and he lends me his hand. I must furnish 
the hand as slight occasion as possible to convey 
sensations of what is happening to it to the cen- 
tral consciousness ; so I place it in an easy posi- 
tion on some support that will relieve it in great 
measure of the feelings that its maintenance or 
movement induces ; and I suspend the support del- 
icately so that it can yield to motion under slight 
impulses with a minimum tendency to have the 
excursions sensed either definitely as to their nature, 
or at all. In all these manipulations my friend is 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 297 

much interested ; and when I tell him to dismiss 
from his consciousness the hand that is now com- 
fortably provided for, to forget that he has it, he 
receives my request with an imperfectly suppressed 
doubt as to whether he is the more foolish to try 
to do so, or I to ask it. He becomes more keenly 
aware than ever that he is the rightful owner 
of that member — indeed, that he has or even is 
little more than arm and hand. Necessarily, I must 
give his mind some absorbing occupation in order 
to get that hand out of its concern. I set him to 
read a story ; and if he really settles down into 
a comfortable attitude, and the story takes hold 
of him, I presently begin to move the apparatus 
that carries his hand — which we may call an 
automatograph — and find I can do so without 
arousing the reader's normal desire to become 
aware of that movement and to take charge of it. 
It is rudimentarily and provisionally dissociated. 
Possibly he does not know when it moves, or that 
it moves, or what kind of movements it makes ; 
or if he is aware of it, his awareness takes an 
unconcerned, extra-personal flavor ; it is not his 
business. 1 

1 An analogous situation arises at sea, when, reposing in my 
berth at night, I assume an anxiously attentive attitude towards 
the vertical, horizontal, and torsional excursions of my body, in- 
duced by the heavy roll. So long as I follow these movements, 
even with closed eyes, anticipating the next lunge or dive, I get 
no sleep ; but if I can persuade myself that these gyrations are 
perfectly normal body-experiences, for which I have no responsi- 
bility whatever, — if I can realize intimately, not with lip-consent, 
that the whole conduct of the ship is the captain's business, not 
mine, — I gradually adapt myself to the situation; I relinquish 
attention to the performance, and I fall asleep. 



298 thp: subconscious 

How much farther one may go depends entirely 
upon the " dissociability " of the subject. Possi- 
bly I can do no more than convert this insensi- 
bility into a slight suggestibility ; I give the 
apparatus a definite type of movement, — a series 
of advancing circles, or m-like movements, or the 
figure 8; and as I remove my guiding finger, 
the hand, unbeknown to its owner, continues my 
suggested movement. Yet the equilibrium of the 
situation is most readily upset ; and any over-zeal- 
ous direction on my part restores the arm, with 
its feelings and movements, to its owner's con- 
sciousness. Suppose I find a subject in whom the 
surrender of the hand proceeds easily and com- 
pletely, whose hand breaks into significant move- 
ments on its own account ; I may then replace the 
automatograph with the more versatile pencil, 
and I may further engage the pencil in routine 
activity, say in making curlicues, or in scribbling 
with a sort of continuous movement, or in writing 
from dictation mechanically, with suppressed com- 
prehension of what is written. Still engaging his 
mind centrally and intently in his reading, I find 
that his hand acquires the power to keep on writ- 
ing while he maintains a fully absorbed reading ; 
and if I cease my dictation, I may find that the 
hand retains a modest power to express some 
words, isolated or in simple construction, rational 
or nonsensical, through the direction of the disso- 
ciated consciousness. The reading self may be- 
come aware (not, however, by the feeling of initia- 
tive, but by the return sensations that the hand 
telegraphs back to the absorbed self) that his pen- 
cil has been making writing-strokes ; but he does 
not know what words these strokes have composed. 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 299 

It is non-personal, automatic writing through a 
dissociated arm, — all of a simple, readily dis- 
turbed, rudimentary character ; yet it carries with 
it the demonstration in normal life of what when 
abnormal is the same phenomenon developed and 
exaggerated. 1 

All that this series of experimental ventures is 
meant to imply is the possibility of mild dissoci- 
ation in the normal consciousness ; but likewise 
that under ordinary circumstances such dissociated 
consciousness would find slight possibility of ex- 
pression. This relation requires exposition as w%ll 
for its own sake as for the illumination it affords 
of the more developed types of dissociation. It 
will be recalled that our nervous arrangements 
provide for but one avenue of expression, — the 
diversified muscular system, composed significantly 
of voluntary and semi-voluntary and involuntary 
muscles. The specific status of a contraction is 
determined by the measure of direction and con- 
sciousness that accompanies it. Now the entire 
range of conscious, voluntary conduct has already 
taken possession of all the available muscular sys- 
tem that could profitably serve its ends. Suppose, 
first, that subconsciously assimilated habits, or 
modes of reaction, or appreciations of a situation, 
or even, if you like, sub voluntary desires or sup- 

1 In this exposition I have followed in the main the procedures 
set forth with great discernment and ingenuity hy Solomon and 
Stein. Psychological Review, vol. xi, p. 492, 1896. 



300 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

pressed longings, seek expression ; clearly they 
have no (or slight) means of finding it except 
through these same preempted channels. Hence 
normally, so far as they exist, they do not reach 
expression ; yet this is not wholly the case. They 
do not reach independent or rival or usurping 
expression ; but they may modify by their presence 
actions that, in the main, are conscious voluntary 
actions. They emphasize or check, corroborate or 
belie, disclose sincerity or hypocrisy, confidence 
or temerity, bravado or brutality, and they do so 
largely by giving a touch to the final execution 
that we cannot by intent perfectly mimic ; by set- 
ting into action intricately combined tensions of 
muscle and gland and circulation, by modifying 
mechanisms that are not reserved for deliberate 
conscious response. But secondly, this too is not 
quite accurate, because the dissociated type of 
consciousness is something different from the sub- 
conscious accompaniment or modification of con- 
scious action ; yet it has affiliations with it. For 
dissociative action, this same muscular expressive 
system must be taken away from the voluntary, 
conscious direction and placed at the disposal of 
the suppressed subconscious. There seem to be 
just two functional methods of accomplishing 
this : the one is to eject, or drug, or incapacitate 
the normal tenant ; and the other is to wrench 
away a part of the muscular apparatus for the 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 301 

desired purpose, while leaving him the rest. It is 
just these two varieties of dissociated conscious- 
ness that we encounter or are able to arrange, and 
each in turn with sub-varieties ; and not unnatu- 
rally, both types may be found in the same indi- 
vidual. In hypnotism we observe the alternating 
dissociation, in which the tenant is ejected, and 
his habitat and possessions placed at the disposal 
of the temporary usurper, who, indeed, commands 
functions removed from ordinary control ; in con- 
comitant dissociation we secure expression of sub- 
conscious experience through some segregated 
medium of record that through distraction has 
been wrested from the totality of the motor equip- 
ment, that simultaneously serves the normal con- 
sciousness ; while in the variety of hysterical 
phenomena and of spontaneous alternating and 
coexisting personalities, there appear again the 
same two varieties and their commingling. It is 
in the exaggerated and systematized dissociability 
of hysteria that the allotment of function thus 
deduced is most typically and most variously pre- 
sented. 

The importance of hysteria for the study of 
subconscious phenomena lies, accordingly, in the 
varied and systematic types of dissociated con- 
sciousness that it is prone to develop. The presen- 
tation of our central argument will not provide a 
general account of hysteria as a malady and of its 



302 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

protean symptoms; yet a brief statement of the 
modern conception of the disorder must be at- 
tempted. Hysteria as a nervous and mental dis- 
arrangement is but the aggravation of a tendency 
or diathesis, along with variable complications 
that its development is liable to accumulate. Its 
eminently plastic, complex, and subtle symptoms 
are the outcome of a psychic flaw or taint, an 
abnormal quality of certain delicate yet funda- 
mental dispositions of mind ; and these in turn 
are conceived as the expression of an obscure 
functional failing of the most highly organized 
centres of the brain. Exaggerated impressiona- 
bility and a pronounced instability of character 
are its more general traits. Certain . realms of 
experience are reacted to with peculiar emphasis, 
arouse vivid emotions, while such affective per- 
meability remains compatible with an apathetic 
and disinterested attitude towards other normally 
attractive appeals. Eyperiences are assimilated 
under an intensely personal perspective, dominated 
according to temperament by a morbid suscepti- 
bility to take offense, an explosive irritability, a 
brooding over trifling or imaginary peccadillos, 
a fictitious embellishment of commonplace inci- 
dents, a passionate indulgence in extravagant day- 
dreams, or a capricious fluctuation from one to 
another of these moods. This emotional mobility 
induces sudden and contrasted mutations of feel- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 303 

ing and impulse, again predominantly in response 
to self-centred or ill-balanced motives. Upon the 
assimilative side, such a disposition brings about 
a narrowing of interests, an inability to take com- 
prehensive and objective views of situations ; in 
brief, a contraction of the span of mental con- 
cerns and a like inefficiency in the control of the 
attentive habits, — both an issue of the dominant 
and confining self -absorption. Upon the reactive 
side, the hysterical weakness takes the form of 
an impaired coordination, an* impulsiveness and 
caprice, — an enthusiastic exertion for short 
efforts, followed by quick weariness, lassitude, 
and exhaustion. The hysterical temperament thus 
exhibits its infirmity as a crippling of the func- 
tional operations of consciousness and will, as a 
peculiarly circumscribed, impeded, and defective 
assimilation, and as a mental inhibition, an un- 
stable control of expression and conduct, — both 
conditioned by a disordered type of intercourse 
between the conscious and subconscious aspects 
of the mental procedures. 

The manifold psychological abnormalities com- 
prised in this description are as significant as the 
distinctive hysterical types that different temper- 
aments, different inheritance and accidents com- 
bine to develop. From the casual lapse into an 
hysterical outbreak — to which upon occasions of 
severe stress or excitement the majority of man- 



304 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

kind are subject — to those in whom hysterical 
symptoms are frequent and unmistakable, but 
usually resisted and in large measure suppressed ; 
to the next more decidedly deviating group, who 
are likely to be regarded as peculiar, possibly 
difficult in intercourse, extreme in conduct, high- 
strung, and unconventional, with certain special 
idiosyncrasies that bring them near to the frontier 
of pronounced abnormality ; to, finally, the true 
hysterical patient, who falls within the pale of the 
medical specialist, and whose vagaries and vicis- 
situdes contribute to the varieties of mental 
derangement, — in this gradation between widely 
separated extremes, distinctions of degree become 
as significant as distinctions of kind. The dis- 
tinctive symptoms of hysteria — the so-called stig- 
mata of the disorder — are found commonly in the 
more pronounced " cases," while minor varieties, 
in which hysterical tendencies are but foibles of 
character writ large, are wholly compatible with 
the occupation of a useful place in the world. 
Indeed, those thus handicapped may exhibit no 
greater and no more incapacitating departures 
from normality than the complexity of human 
life and character naturally entails. In the inter- 
pretation of hysterical types and symptoms, care- 
ful allowance must be made for the effect upon 
thought and conduct of personal antecedents, — 
of culture, station, habit of life, race, nationality, 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 305 

and experience, — an allowance that requires the 
nicest appraisal of traits on the part of the 
psychologist, the physician, and the man of affairs. 
The special groups of symptoms that contribute 
most directly to the abnormal psychology of the 
subconscious occur commonly in the more de- 
veloped hysterias ; yet throughout the series, the 
liability to dissociation of consciousness is a direct 
and consistent consequence of the intrinsic disar- 
rangement for which the term hysteria primarily 
stands, and may, like other hysterical symptoms, be 
quite pronounced in the comparative absence or 
weakness of other groups of distinctive hysterical 
indices. And finally, hysteria, though common 
in men, finds its more frequent and characteristic 
expression in women, and is, above all, distinctive 
of the period of emotional dominance, — of early 
and late youth. It is in the soil thus prepared 
that alterations of consciousness find inviting con- 
ditions to germinate and flourish. 

The aspect of the developed hysterical abnor- 
mality that engages our interest is the disturbance 
that it frequently presents in the participation 
of the conscious and subconscious factors of the 
mental life : a perversion or alteration of the mode 
of entry, the manner of registry, the appeal to 
the personal assimilation, the altered metabolism 
of the mind, by which the food meets with a mod- 
ified, seemingly capriciously transformed appetite, 



306 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

is differently digested, develops a morbid type of 
tissue, presents curiously disturbed, curiously se- 
lective affinities and limitations. Most representa- 
tive of this process is the hysterical variety of that 
ignoring of the actual, normally successful solici- 
tors to conscious notice, that is naturally classified 
as an anaesthesia, — yet an insensibility not of the 
sense-organ or of its nervous substrata, but of a 
partially maimed, seemingly vetoing consciousness. 

A normal experience in the form of a persist- 
ent absent-mindedness may prove a profitable 
approach to the comprehension of such mental 
anaesthesias. A business man living in the sub- 
urbs, as he entered the train upon his homeward 
journey, reflected upon the threatening aspect of 
the sky, and considered the chances of finding his 
carriage awaiting him at the station, in case the 
impending rain came on. His hopes were doomed 
to disappointment ; and he resigned himself to a 
wet walk home. As the downpour became heavier, 
he more keenly regretted his wavering hesitation 
in the morning in regard to taking an umbrella. 
When at length he presented himself dripping 
at his door, he was greeted with shouts of derision 
at his plight ; for tucked under his arm was the 
umbrella, unopened, unperceived. So convinced 
had he been that he had neglected to provide 
himself with this protection, that the repeated 
solicitations to his senses offered by the presence 
of that object passed unheeded. Doubtless, in the 
course of his walk, the umbrella had fallen within 
the range of his vision ; and certainly his arm had 
sufficiently attended to the feelings resulting from 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 307 

the carrying of the article to prevent its being 
dropped. To these appeals to see and feel and 
recognize did his mental prepossession render 
him blind and insensible. Had any passer-by 
broken through his " absent " spell and pointed 
out his neglected opportunities, he would at once, 
and with some surprise and amusement, have seen 
and felt and consciously used what in his reflec- 
tions he repeatedly longed for: in this last con- 
sideration lies the normality of the experience. 

A comparable type of anaesthesia is readily in- 
duced by suggestion in the hypnotized subject. 
We place the umbrella under his arm and insist 
that no such object exists. The same persistent 
oblivion ensues ; but there is added one signifi- 
cant difference : all ordinary attempts to call his 
attention to the umbrella by displaying it before 
his eyes or showing him it under his arm fail, so 
long as his mind is subject to the hypnotic pro- 
hibition. Yet some suppressed phase of his con- 
sciousness utilizes the sensations that lead to the 
proper support of the umbrella. This not-at- 
homeness to a sensory appeal, that is none the 
less subconsciously received, is present, yet differ- 
ently present, in the hysterical anaesthesia. The 
hysterical patient may come to discover that she 
does not see or hear or feel this or that object 
or person, in spite of other successful appeals to 
eye or ear or hand ; and again no demonstration, 
however obvious, relieves this mental incapacity. 
Yet the condition has a greater permanence, en- 
ters more complexly into the spontaneous occu- 
pations, and persists from day to day so long as 
this special phase of her hysterical impairment 
continues ; the anaesthesia is systematized. More- 



308 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

over, this type of objectively directed anaesthesia 
that ignores a single object or group of objects 
is not the usual one. Such failure to become 
aware of patches of experience is typically con- 
nected with a perceptive organ ; there may be 
hysterical blindness in one eye or lack of feeling 
in one hand. In that event, whatever is presented 
to the blind eye and to the unfeeling hand does 
not exist to the hysterical consciousness. Close 
the seeing eye, and the patient declares herself 
to be in darkness. Bring a lighted candle before 
the mentally blind eye, and she declares there is 
no object there. Manipulate the unfeeling hand 
as you will ; prick it, or burn it, or place the fin- 
gers in painful attitudes, and there is no protest. 
Yet, as before, it is possible to demonstrate that 
some part of the nervous system registers what 
the blind eye sees, and notes the pain that the 
unfeeling hand repudiates. The disorder is a 
mental one, a psychological exclusion of adequate 
stimuli from adequate consciousness. Such men- 
tal prohibitions or obstacles we are acquainted 
with in the field of prejudice and prepossession ; 
a recognition thereof is embodied in the familiar 
saying that there are none so blind as those that 
will not see. To be adapted to the hysterical 
experience, the maxim should read : There are 
none so blind as those who cannot will to see. 

The nature of the evidence that what is thus 
excluded from consciousness achieves subcon- 
scious registry is of the type with which we have 
become familiar. Any procedure that dismisses, 
overrules, circumvents, or lulls the hysterical con- 
sciousness may succeed in restoring the banished 
member to normal awareness. In one patient, a 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 309 

pinch during sleep upon the anaesthetic side pro- 
voked groans and the words : " You pinch me ; " 
in another, a dose of morphine recovered the 
lapsed feeling ; while in a third, alcoholic intoxica- 
tion replaced the hysterical by the normal aware- 
ness. Hypnotic suggestion, to which hystericals 
are commonly susceptible, will be equally success- 
ful; and the evidence becomes more convincing 
because of the automatic intelligence that guides 
the handling of the objects that are seemingly 
lost to both sight and memory. The anaesthetic 
fingers, that report to the central consciousness 
that they are wholly unoccupied, are properly 
slipped through the finger-holes of a pair of scis- 
sors, or take up a needle in the correct position for 
sewing. The indirect route of association under- 
mines the anaesthesia : the suggestion is given 
that when the thumb is touched, a butterfly will 
be seen, and when the little finger, a bluebird; 
and the hallucination is effected even though the 
consciousness remains insensitive to the tactile 
stimulation. To another hysterical subject the 
suggestion is made that whenever anything blue 
appears, she will hear the ringing of bells ; and 
though with her right (seeing) eye closed, she finds 
herself in the dark, yet as colored worsteds are 
passed before her left (anaesthetic) eye, all other 
colors are ignored, but the appearance of blue calls 
forth the remark : " Oh ! I hear bells ringing." 1 

1 While these observations are described as occurring in hyp- 
nosis, it must be added that in their waking state many hysteri- 
cal patients are equally open to suggestion. Their constitutional 
dissociation is adequate in many instances to elicit the same 
varieties of evidence of the subconscious registration of what the 
dominant consciousness is disqualified from receiving. 



310 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The variety of anaesthesias throws an interest- 
ing light upon their causes or inducing occasions. 
The senses have by no means equal values for 
experience. The dominant intellectual attention 
follows the lead of the eye, and is served as its 
most intimate attendant by the highly sensitized 
central spot of the retina, — the fovea, — with 
which we definitely look, not merely vaguely see. 
Even in listening to a speaker's words, we facili- 
tate their assimilation by a visual following of his 
expression. This most precious servitor of in- 
tercourse with the world so full of a number of 
things, we could least afford to lose from our con- 
scious concern. In contrast with vision, touch 
offers a more dispensable type of information, — 
less aggressive, with less initiative. We could 
afford with resulting inconvenience, but with no 
irreplaceable loss, to remain relatively unaware of 
objects through handling them, and to receive 
them into our ken only as they fall within the 
ransre of our vision. 



■&' 



Hysteria presents types of selective awareness 
in accordance with these principles. One hysteri- 
cal subject, who can be made to reveal by auto- 
matic writing what is impressed upon her anaes- 
thetic hand, becomes aware that that member is 
moving, not by any direct sensation, but by see- 
ing the movements as the pencil proceeds ; yet 
these movements are intelligent, and are express- 
ing the reflections of her consistent self. Natu- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 311 

rally, such writing is to her controlling" conscious- 
ness an extra-personal affair, taking place, like 
digestion, in her organism, but not by her agency. 
Place her hand in a strained attitude, and she 
has a visual picture, but no direct perception of 
the uncomfortable position. Another patient, in 
whose anaesthetic hand several objects are placed 
one after the other, is induced to move her hand 
so as to bring what she grasps before her eyes: 
whereupon she remarks with surprise, " Why ! I 
have a key in my hand ! " In yet another case, a 
fictitious object is introduced as a visual sugges- 
tion, and by its strong appeal arouses the dormant 
tactual sensibility. The suggestion is made that 
the subject sees a caterpillar and that it is crawl- 
ing upon her anaesthetic arm, whereupon she both 
sees and feels the unpleasant hallucination. 

It is thus not by accident that what drops out 
of the hysterical field of awareness is what in the 
mental economy of the intellectual and emotional 
intercourse may be most readily spared ; and fur- 
ther, that within the dispensable field such ave- 
nues of information are retained, or partially 
so, as still find useful connection with the intact 
perceptions. Touch and the indirect field of 
vision, or the sensations of a slighted hand or out- 
lying retina, may thus be dismissed, and the more 
readily, as they are specially localized instruments, 
— separable parts of a whole, that may be sacri- 
ficed while retaining the service of the remaining 
more important sensory areas. By the same sub- 
conscious economy, sensations essential to a situa- 
tion are perceived even by the " silent partner ; " 
hysterical subjects who fall or swoon in an attack 
do so without hurt through taking notice of threat- 



312 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

erring obstacles ; and again, they do not allow the 
disqualified sense to overturn the assimilative pro- 
cesses that the active senses furnish. An ingen- 
ious test of this relation was elicited by placing 
a piece of cardboard between the two eyes and 
extending it to the printed letters which the left 
(seeing) eye could read, but the right (mentally 
blind) eye could not ; though by this device each 
eye could see only the letters on its own half of 
the field, yet the right (blind) eye continued to 
finish the word, the opening letters of which were 
presented to the left and the concluding letters to 
the right eye only. And upon the negative side 
we find that the central part of retinal vision is not 
lost any more than is hearing, for both are too es- 
sential to the mental life. Hearing especially will 
not be forfeited, because it is too necessary, too 
intimate, too social a sense, too little consciously 
apperceived as an instrument of exploration of the 
objective qualities of impersonal things. 

Its messages appeal more directly to the self, at 
once achieve translation in terms of intellectual 
and emotional meaning, and are thus concerned 
with the indispensable ties of personal assimilation. 
If, then, the assimilative horizon must be nar- 
rowed, the least insistent, the least independent, 
and the least interesting appeals will be sacrificed ; 
it is to this principle that many, though by no 
means all, of the seemingly capricious psychic 
anaesthesias conform. 1 

1 It should not be hastily concluded that this is the sole reason 
for the prevalence of tactile anaesthesias. There are doubtless 
more direct motives inherent in the texture of the nervous system 
that induce these disorders to assume their specific symptoms; 
and, furthermore, such anaesthesias are both fluctuating and sub- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 313 

The surrender of an opportunity of possible 
experience, or the mental rejection of certain types 
of stimuli, is not a phenomenon that stands in 
isolated independence ; it inevitably involves con- 
comitant disqualifications both of assimilation and 
of control ; and it does so because the dissocia- 
tion of consciousness is a functional failing that 
leaves its impress upon all the several factors of 
the mental life that participate in its consum- 
mation. Exclusion of suitable claimants from 
recognition is but one consequence of dissoci- 
ation. Divorce from feeling stands in closest 
relation with divorce from control ; and both inti- 
mately react upon the memory registry, and most 
complexly upon that phase thereof that imparts 
the personal flavor to experience and develops the 
traits of a consistent character. The relation is 
simplest in terms of the measure of awareness 
that is needed to guide movement. Acts of skill, 
all organized movements, require the integrity 
of the sensory clues in dependence upon which 
the proficiency was acquired. The expert billiard 
player or marksman must have an accurately 
gauging eye as well as a nicely controlled hand ; 

ject to maturing changes, by virtue of which a limited and poten- 
tially transient lapse develops into a more widespread, more 
systematic, and more permanent anaesthesia. Such variants and 
concomitants of hysterical symptoms are again considered ; see 
pages 319, 332, etc. For a more detailed treatment, the first chap- 
ter of Janet : The Mental State of Hystericals, may be consulted. 



314 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the trained singer requires the corrective regula- 
tion of a sensitive ear to maintain a minutely del- 
icate direction of the vocal mechanism. If, then, 
I can skate or swim, play the flute or violin, sew 
or weave or carve or write, I direct these accom- 
plishments by virtue of the guiding sensations, 
the very possession of which is a vital part of my 
proficiency. When these accomplishments are of 
long standing and deeply ingrained, we call them 
automatic, and note with what suppressed con- 
sciousness and with what slightness of effort they 
are conducted ; if new or of peculiar complex- 
ity, or if involving unusual intellectual factors, 
we observe how they enlarge in the field of our 
awareness and encroach upon our directive ener- 
gies. 

The direct conclusion from this relation is that 
a psychic type of insensibility would be accompa- 
nied by a psychic type of paralysis ; disqualified 
feeling should induce disqualified doing. Yet 
before testing the validity of this deduction, let 
it be noted that this sensory factor is not the 
whole of the voluntary action : to develop sensa- 
tion into action requires an efficient impulse, — 
the will to do. Knowledge is not yet power, 
though indispensable to it, but becomes so when 
executive control completes the circuit ; the motor 
requires a battery as well as a proper construc- 
tion and proper connections. There may, accord- 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 315 

ingly, be abject weakness of will, — abulia, — a 
symptom common in all nervous weakness, and 
even more characteristic of neurasthenia than of 
hysteria. It is the deficiency of voluntary atten- 
tion that conditions the mental contraction and 
facilitates the anaesthesias ; it is this, too, that 
leads to other specific concomitants of a disso- 
ciated consciousness. It was, indeed, in the form 
of such a momentary and limited will-paralysis 
that the simplest hypnotic phenomenon was in- 
duced ; the will-impulse was shorn of its efficiency 
by the force of a counter suggestion, just as nor- 
mally it might be neutralized by fear, by scruples, 
or by prudence. Between these two types of 
motor impairment — the incapacity to perform a 
given act by reason of a lapse of the guiding sen- 
sory clues, and by reason of an irresolute or en- 
tangled impulse — it is important to distinguish. 
In uncomplicated cases the former becomes in 
the main a type of memory defect, a sensory 
amnesia ; while the latter is classified as an abulia, 
or inefficient will. And whether an amnesic or 
an abulic symptom, the psychic paralysis main- 
tains its peculiar status as a disorder in terms of 
a personal, conscious assimilation. What the will 
fails to effect can be accomplished by subvolun- 
tary agencies, and what is lost to the directive 
consciousness is subconsciously registered. 

The hysterical impairments of initiative, coor- 



316 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

dination and attention, are immediately important 
as furnishing a favorable condition for the growth 
of dissociation. For the pronounced hysterical 
temperament, wide or well-maintained alertness of 
mind is difficult ; two activities, though of slight 
import, can no longer be maintained at once ; to 
give attention to a small area of experience in- 
volves the momentary loss of the rest. The spread 
of the search-light of attention is much reduced, 
while also its power of illumination is enfeebled. 
The mental blinders — though peculiarly selective 
in what they admit and exclude — are worn more 
and more continuously ; the contracted habit 
of consciousness is formed. Systematic gaps in 
perception and in the control of the expressive 
agencies of the intellect are at first tolerated, then 
resignedly or stolidly accepted. The patient for- 
gets to include her arm within her conscious 
concern ; and it remains neglected, possibly in a 
permanently contracted attitude. 

Extreme as this statement appears, there are 
analogies, though in miniature, in normal life. 
Two such incidents have been related to me : 
Husband and wife were seated at the breakfast- 
table ; she was glancing at the headlines of the 
morning paper, and was just stretching out her 
hand to receive her plate from her husband, when 
her eye was caught by a paragraph that interested 
her intensely. During the entire reading of the 
item — certainly for a full minute — she held the 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 317 

plate rigidly fixed in her outstretched hand ; and 
then, the paragraph finished, she " came to " with 
a slight start and took the neglected hand back 
under her conscious wing. The rigidity of the 
hand, as well as its continuance of an attitude by 
an automatic response, was the result of its sepa- 
ration from normal consciousness through an ex- 
treme absorption. The other instance is quite sim- 
ilar, though less circumstantial : A preacher was 
observed to keep his uplifted hand high above his 
head for an appreciable time after the sentiment 
that aroused this gesture had been delivered, and 
to turn a moment later and suddenly lower his 
hand as though his eyes had just discovered the 
stranded member in its persisting attitude. The 
fully developed hysterical marooning of an arm 
— that when it assumes such a fixed attitude is 
termed cataleptic — is more permanent, more sys- 
tematic. Moreover the cataleptic arm that is with- 
drawn from control is also anaesthetic, withdrawn 
from awareness ; just as, quite possibly, in the 
normal instance, the husband might have gently 
touched his wife's hand that was automatically 
holding the plate, without reaching her engaged 
attention. 

The uncomplicated formula, that called for the 
direct loss of the motor facilities through the loss 
of the memory of how to direct them, may also 
be observed in hysteria ; and the psychic nature 
of the defect is again shown in its functionally 
selective character. With an actually paralyzed 
arm, none of the muscles whose nervous centres 
are disordered can be made to contract ; but in 



318 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

hysterical paralysis, it is not groups of muscles, 
but a motor apparatus in use for specified purposes 
that is affected. The hand, though retentive of 
other accomplishments, can no longer sew ; or the 
legs can run and jump, but cannot manage to 
walk ; or more generally, the arm is retained for 
its service in non-personal automatic activities, 
but cannot be commanded for actions expressive 
of self-initiative or deliberate execution. In such 
instances we have the transition to the motor in- 
efficiency through will-loss. The subject who can- 
not reach out her hand to take her needlework 
from the table, from sheer entanglement of her 
impulses (the desire and intention being strong), 
does this instantly when her imprisoned will is 
released by a hypnotic suggestion, or may do it 
unreflectively when by some ruse momentarily 
thrown off her guard. Very instructive is the in- 
stance of a robust hysterical maiden accustomed 
to heavy housework, — in the course of which 
she moves ponderous chairs and tables, which 
she does with the unreflectiveness begot of a semi- 
automatic task, — who none the less is able to 
record only the contractive power of a child, when 
asked to squeeze a dynamometer with all her 
available strength. Her muscular force is there, 
and serves her automatic habits; but the power 
of directing impulses along voluntary routes as the 
expression of a personal will has been hysterically 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 319 

enfeebled. 1 Interesting also are those impair- 
ments of actions that, like the partial anaesthe- 
sias, require the support of the more consciously 
serving eyesight. With her arm held behind her 
back, a patient was unable to direct its movements 
or to become aware of them, though quite able to 
do useful things with her hands when they were 
occupied under the guidance of her eyes ; yet 
she properly used both hands behind her back in 
lacing her corset in the morning's dressing. In 
such cases the definitely initiated, fully conscious 
movements must be visually directed, the inde- 
pendent tactual guidance having been sacrificed 
in the contraction of the hysterical consciousness. 
It is appropriate to recall at this juncture that 
the primary purpose of this division of our analy- 
sis has been to pass in review the significant 
phenomena of dissociation, in relation to the sub- 
jective states and conditions that induce them. 
Such data directly illuminate the deviating phases 
of consciousness, transitory or persisting, that, 
viewed as a psychic product, contribute strikingly 
to the abnormal psychology of consciousness. 

1 The records of tremendous exertions under special excite- 
ments, such as an accident or a fire, are obviously analogous; 
and even invalids occasionally perform the impossible under such 
circumstances, in some cases the surprising demonstration of 
actual powers serving as the starting-point of a recovery. The 
normal relations concerned are discussed on page 29 and fol- 
lowing pages. 



320 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The further expansion of such dissociated pro- 
cesses into more or less coordinated and independ- 
ent agencies will form the theme of the succeed- 
ing exposition. The central consideration that we 
carry over to the sequel is the demonstrable range 
of psychical lapses — affecting predominantly 
the assimilative attitudes, the executive facilities, 
and the memory registry — that come to exhibit 
attenuated connection with the central conscious- 
ness, and thus variously to illustrate the sorts and 
conditions of dissociated functions. Two corol- 
laries from this relation are equally important : 
first, that the several mental states in which such 
dissociations prosper are by no means of the same 
or even of parallel status, though always present- 
ing some measure of affiliation, — an affiliation 
that extends in consistent though diminishing 
analogy to the slighter incidents, the abnormal 
lapses in miniature, of the normal life ; and second, 
that the dissociation is to be conceived as a single 
consistent twist of the gears, flaw of the working 
of the mental mechanism, that is detected and 
described in terms of such distinctive deviations 
of the normal product in weave and pattern, in 
texture and design, as the technical skill of the 
psychologist enables him to set forth. The sen- 
sory gaps, the memory fadings and rejections, 
the motor entanglements, the personal limitations 
and extravagances, are but differently appearing 



THE DISSOCIATED CONSCIOUSNESS 321 

aspects of a common defect, of a more or less 
extensively, variously, and kaleidoscopically dis- 
sociated consciousness. 

That this survey has been conducted upon a 
descriptive * and somewhat objective level is freely 
admitted, and is in pursuance of the deliberate 
plan to consider the relations involved more ana- 
lytically in the presence of the complete range 
of evidence. The intrinsic nature of dissociation 
is thus not dismissed as an irrelevant or insoluble 
theme, but is deferred to the point at which the 
expository trend has been exchanged for the ex- 
planatory. Yet the rounding up of our present 
pursuit entails the obligation of suggesting the 
direction in which insight lies. Dissociation in- 
volves not only something set apart, stranded, — 
the parting of a cable and the setting adrift of 
some sections of the mental raft ; it involves some 
central dominating agency from which the dis- 
sociation takes place. It involves, in other words, 

1 It would have been apposite at almost any stage of this expo- 
sition to call renewed attention to the fact that I am not giving 
an account of the assimilative, retentive, and voluntary abnormal- 
ities of hysteria, any more than of hysteria as a whole. I am 
singling out certain phenomena that have bearing upon dissocia- 
tion, and that occur typically in hysteria. Just what place these 
occupy in the ensemble of this protean disorder, as well as a gen- 
eral perspective of hysteria with realistic details, can be gathered 
only from the special literature, mainly of a medical turn. To 
this field, Janet's The Mental State of Hystericals is a suitable 
introduction. 



322 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

that when we experience anything and make it 
our own, there is an act of incorporation, possibly 
so elemental and seemingly inevitable that we 
do not conceive it as a separate activity of our 
mental life, but yet some personal reaction that 
brings the experience within the intimate circle of 
our personality, that makes it our legitimate kith 
and kin. The complete act of assimilation involves 
this synthetic factor; and the briefest sugges- 
tion of the dissociated experience that we can 
provisionally formulate is that it is deprived in 
various ways and for various causes of this syn- 
thetic privilege. The non-personal, non-synthetized 
experience, that yet achieves some registry in the 
nervous system, — which under special conditions 
becomes observable as furnishing- mental nourish- 
ment to a subconscious form of assimilation, — is 
thus the dissociated experience ; and the conse- 
quences to the intelligence in which such states 
habitually occur and multiply inevitably affect the 
entire personal integrity of consciousness. By 
such development do dissociated states pave the 
way to disintegrated personality. 



V 

THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 

The aspect of dissociated mental procedure that 
requires studious consideration is that reflected in 
the memory function, and particularly in the phase 
of mental registry that binds experiences together, 
knits them firmly into a coherent continuum, and 
imparts to the whole the intimate personal flavor 
through which they become our experiences. The 
stability as well as the unity of a normal mental 
life is based upon an integrity of feeling and 
thought, which expresses itself as a fair consistency 
of attitude and response amid the progressive as- 
similations of experience. The experiences in turn 
modify and develop but do not mar or derange the 
evolution of personal growth, and thus promote the 
building of an individual self. From the presen- 
tation of the activities that contribute in normal 
life to maintain and foster a homogeneous self- 
consciousness, we may carry over two principles : 
the one emphasizing the distinctive attitude of 
alert assimilation that secures for normal experi- 
ences a legitimate place in the personal recollec- 
tion ; and the other, the equally distinctive will-like 
quality of assenting inclination that attends and 



324 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

consummates the admission of the applicant to the 
private hearth. The personal assimilation when 
more passively receptive, and the personal flat 
when more actively expressive, stamp with the 
hall-mark of an authoritative registry the normal 
issues of our mental constructions. These, though 
complexly various in scope and purpose, yet con- 
tain a sufficient infusion of the personal alloy to 
meet the assay test as sterling metal of our men- 
tal realm. The nature of this assay, so much of 
which is conducted in the subconscious laboratory, 
it is difficult to set forth in simple f ormulse ; the 
assimilation proceeds upon the basis of an intri- 
cate complex of organic feelings, of specifically 
directed perceptions, and of reasoned relations, the 
joint issue of which accompanies and pervades the 
progress of mental life. Its presence, however, is 
so elemental and so normal a feature of the mind's 
progressions that it brings to consciousness no 
distinctive feeling, such as attends its momentary 
lapse; 1 the sense of personal orientation explicitly 
emerges in the moment of awakening from sleep 
or anaesthesia, when all is confusion until the 
pressing query, " Where am I?" has been satisfied. 

1 In this respect it shares the traits of many partly organic, partly 
subconscious perceptions ; such are the sensory clues by which we 
maintain our equilibrium, which we feel not directly as sensations 
of positive character, but feel acutely in their disturbance as slip- 
ping, tottering, unsteadiness, dizziness, and the reflex accompa- 
niments of nausea, headache, and vague organic discomfort. 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 325 

Yet this orientation discloses but one expression 
of the personal quality of experience ; and elemen- 
tal as they are, the several factors that further the 
personal growth are subject to lapse, disorder, 
illusion, and disintegration. Through a disturb- 
ance of organic f eelings that gives an alien quality 
to the consciousness of one's own reactions, or 
through altered attitudes and interests that impart 
a strangeness to what is yet recognized as a famil- 
iar environment, or through the felt presence of a 
gap or confused memory in the reconstruction of 
the immediate past, there may be some awareness 
of the altered condition which, though subtle and 
difficult to reduce to words, affects most vitally 
the dominant tone of the personal consciousness. 
Likewise may the rupture be so complete as to 
destroy the possibility of arousing explicit aware- 
ness; the altered state retains no introspective 
standard beyond its own experience. Yet evi- 
dences of the change hover in the margins of 
consciousness and affect its moods and temper ; 
though but feebly and distortedly appreciated by 
the subject thereof, the altered mental status 
clearly appears in the objective behavior to which 
the disturbed self-feelings give rise. It would 
thus seem possible that through some obscure con- 
ditioning factor in the nervous substrata of the 
mental life, the reactions should fail to yield that 
personal quality which is their shibboleth, and for 



326 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

lack of recognition go about as strangers in their 
own realm. The causes of such disenfranchise- 
ment — beyond the general indication of an ab- 
normal condition of internal affairs — cannot be 
adequately inferred from such knowledge as we 
possess of the mental constitution. Such losses 
of natural privilege may arise significantly from 
states of internal dissension, from failure of har- 
monious cooperation among constituent bureaus 
of administration, and as well from incapacitating 
disruption of the entire government. The special, 
as well as the general lines of dissolution, which 
they express, must at the outset be empirically 
traced, then charted and set forth with such 
meaning as the insight of our interpretations may 
supply. They will not be found to follow any 
simple system of contour lines, for such disturb- 
ances are of perplexingly different types ; yet the 
more significant of them (disregarding the organic 
disorders that involve or approach actual insanity) 
have in common the factor of personal disintegra- 
tion, to which the liability to dissociated attitudes 
or states directly leads. The transition that is 
now to be made is accordingly from the analysis 
of partially dissociated phenomena to the study of 
dissociated-mindedness ; from a survey of the more 
isolated and transient traits and symptoms to that 
of the more systematic, more independently organ- 
ized, more regularly recurring, more permanent 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 327 

and even usurping changes that interrupt and 
dethrone the normal continuity of dominance of 
a unified personality. 

To prevent our straying amid the perplexing 
tangle of the abnormal jungle, let us blaze a pre- 
liminary trail by chain and compass, which we 
may later exchange for a more natural highway 
when the topography of the region shall have 
been laid bare. We have observed that the onset 
of spontaneous somnambulism transports the 
sleeper to a condition in which a certain range of 
his mental efficiencies is brought into activity, 
while otherwise his mind remains asleep; and, 
further, that the confirmed somnambulist, in re- 
verting to this condition, may take up the thread 
of his detached experience and connect one phase 
of his sleeping activity with the others, while 
yet the sequence of his nocturnal occupation 
remains concealed from his normal memory, which 
consistently concerns itself only with what the wak- 
ing self initiates and assimilates. In such a group 
of incidents, we have not only recurrent states of 
dissociation, but the beginnings of a dissociated 
personality as well. The sleep-acting consciousness 
remains rudimentary and restricted, decidedly 
cramped in the scope of its doings and percep- 
tions, because so relatively narrow a portion of the 
faculties are alert ; yet it partakes of the traits of 
a personality in so far as during somnambulism 



328 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the individual exhibits consistent interests, acts 
upon memories, is possessed by impulses and 
takes possession of muscles to carry them out, 
modifies his behavior by adjustment to situations, 
reflects and devises, — all of which conduct may 
be in contrast with, as it remains unrevealed to, his 
normal self. He is in no strained sense of the term 
a different person when normally wakefully occu- 
pied, and when somnambulistically occupied. In 
thus characterizing the difference we still recognize 
the superior coherence, the far greater scope, the 
vastly more developed status of the normal self. 

An altered personality may thus be a mere chip 
of the parent block, possibly only the exagger- 
ation of a vagrant mood of the dominant temper ; 
yet these defections may be appropriately viewed 
as the sprouts of budding personalities, which, 
grafted upon a suitable stem and meeting with 
favoring circumstance, may send forth distinctive 
flower and fruit. The tree remains in a true sense 
a single growth, germinating originally from a 
single seedling, but at the time of its fruitage 
presents a decidedly different appearance as we 
approach it from the one side or the other. Should 
the grafted branches flourish and multiply, while 
the more original limbs remain barren, it becomes 
questionable whether to describe our abnormal 
product as a peach-tree bearing plums, or a plum- 
tree grafted upon a peach trunk. Yet our simile 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 329 

loses pertinence when we recognize that alterations 
of personality are likely to develop as alternations 
of personality, that in our psychological orchard 
we must be prepared to find peaches upon the tree 
one morning, where shortly before we saw plums. 
Whether the transformations shall be regarded 
as encroaching upon the sphere of personality will 
thus depend upon how extensive, how organized, 
how independent they become. We have observed 
how differently the dreaming consciousness con- 
ducts its affairs from the business methods, inter- 
ests, and standards of waking life ; but while the 
dreaming self may be conceded to be sufficiently 
independent, it ordinarily lacks comprehensiveness 
and organization. We find it altogether more ra- 
tional to speak of our "dream-states," rather than 
of our " dream-selves," and to record their possibili- 
ties and limitations, their affiliations and contrasts 
to the waking states. Most of all are they deprived 
of possibilities of development as personalities by 
reason of their exclusion from the use of a motor 
apparatus and of sensory channels of intercourse, 
as well as of the restrictions under which they 
operate in their drafts upon an inner world of 
contemplation. Our dream-life is thus a reflected, 
dependent, distorted, and sporadic abstract of our 
waking consciousness. Accordingly we find no 
difficulty in accepting these dream-experiences as 
indicative of normal gaps in our personal con- 



330 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tinuity, incidental to the periodic necessities for 
repair for fatigued functions; and with the re- 
freshed alertness of the morning — or less clearly 
as well as less cheerfully in the momentary wake- 
fulness of the night — we resume the sequence 
of our affairs with ease and precision. The som- 
nambulistic intrusions, though still sharing with 
dreams the incidental, parasitical type of being, 
command a more comparable approximation to the 
waking functions, and accordingly present greater 
possibilities of expansion. If the tendency to 
somnambulism chanced to be so regular and so 
pronounced that the relinquishment for any cause 
whatsoever of the normal self at once transformed 
the individual to this partial waking condition, in 
which a distinctive though handicapped mental 
life was carried on, and if these phases of mental 
activity tended to be pursued in some consistent 
sequence of interests, the waking personality would 
come to be alternated by a somnambulistic person- 
ality; the parasitic life would be comparable in 
status with that of the host, and if the process de- 
veloped sufficiently, it might become difficult to 
say which was parasite and which host. Naturally, 
a disintegration of this degree of independence 
could not reach such importance unless the para- 
sitic intrusions pervaded or interrupted the larger 
spans of waking activity, — not merely the briefer, 
passive ones of mental abeyance in sleep, — and 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 331 

unless the intrusions were sufficiently comprehen- 
sive to acquire some command of the indispen- 
sable instruments of the intellectual life, the senses 
and muscles, and the acquisitions and endowments 
that are the deposits of experience in the mental 
organism. 

If, then, through some flaw of the cementing 
quality of the mind's constructions, an individual 
were liable frequently to lose the continuous exer- 
cise of his personal assimilation, — the recurring 
loss in so far interrupting the sequence of waking 
thought, — to lapse into a quasi-somnambulistic 
state in which he retains a restricted and altered 
use of his acquisitions, yet retains them sufficiently 
to carry on a mental life in his ordinary environ- 
ment; if, moreover, such transformation restore 
to him the memories of activities in similar lapses 
that have overtaken him, we should presently be 
constrained to admit that during the lapsed inter- 
vals there is present an altered personality. The 
gaps would not merely have enlarged in extent, 
but developed in complexity ; so that, forming 
some coherence in their sequence, they bridge over 
the interruptions of what is still the more pri- 
mary, the more real self, and effect an organization 
of their own. This independent corporation, if 
favored by circumstance, may have a fair chance 
to live and move and have a being, measurably 
distinct from the active single existence that previ- 



332 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ously constituted the unified life of the individual. 
Such instability of character would be clearly ab- 
normal, but as a trait or accident of the mental 
organization, may be considered as an aggravated 
development of the same type of disturbance that 
leads to the phenomena of dissociation. 

The guiding principle that brings some measure 
of comprehension into these obscure and protean 
phenomena is that an altered personality is the 
issue of a recurrent and systematized liability to 
lapsed or dissociated states ; that further, in order 
to expand into a partial or complete personality, 
such dissociated states must acquire a consistency 
of sequence that develops an integrating memory, 
an avenue of expression and assimilation through 
the use of all or much of the sensory and mus- 
cular systems, and proceeds also with some selec- 
tive participation in the endowments, acquisitions, 
and habits of the more original, stable self. The 
manner of such participation serves as a signifi- 
cant clue to the type of disintegration that has 
ensued. It is wholly possible that the fissures 
along which division occurs, the lines of cleav- 
age, may be quite variable, resulting in this or 
that phase of a handicapped self according to the 
division of facilities and memories retained and 
lost. An altered personality issues from the recur- 
rent and related disintegrations along- the same 
lines of cleavage ; a constantly shifting partition- 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 333 

ing would lead to mere confusing interruptions 
of mental continuity. The fact that such dissoci- 
ated personalities acquire recognizable physiog- 
nomies points to a constant conditioning flaw in 
the functional operations of an unstable nervous 
system ; the machine has a tendency to break 
down in a definite way ; but what the nature of 
the twist may be that produces such strange dis- 
turbance in the mental operations we do not know, 
can hardly conjecture. Amid much that remains 
obscure and baffling we may explore the terra 
incognita with some system in our route, some 
interpretative aids to the comprehension of what 
we shall discover. The phenomena of altered per- 
sonality do not stand alone and unrelated ; they 
represent a peculiarly involved development of 
mental disintegration, and take their place at the 
end of a series whose successive members have 
already contributed to our general analyses. 1 

1 The reader must bear in mind that what is here traced is the 
evolution of a dissociated personality. The curtailment of a self by 
the disqualification of a portion of its acquisitions naturally in- 
duces so altered a status of the mind's occupations as to merit the 
name of an altered personality. Yet the two conditions, though 
not without points of contact, are distinct. The latter type will be 
considered subsequently under modified formulae of interpretation. 
It is entirely possible that the same obscure type of brain injury 
that leads to disintegration of personality may result from other 
causes, particularly from a sudden shock or accident. Such trau- 
matic cases form an instructive variation from the maturing ones, 
and equally with them must be taken into account in formulating 
a conception of their genesis. 



334 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The examples of dissociated-mindedness in 
hysteria have been taken from cases that were 
not complicated by fully developed alteration of 
personality; they were incidents from the lives 
of bereft, handicapped, or crippled personalities, 
but the realms thus withdrawn were too incidental, 
too fragmentary in character, to take rank as 
foundations of seceding colonies from the parent 
stem. It is naturally the case that the several 
types of mental dissociation cited, and yet more 
involved instances, attend the formation of altered 
personality in hysteria ; and it is equally a conse- 
quence of our general position that the soil in 
which such dissociated personalities are likely to 
flourish is that supplied by the hysterical temper- 
ament. What this means is that the manner of 
formation and the distinctive characteristics of 
these deviating and seceding personalities will 
partake of that peculiar status, especially of that 
paradoxical mode of intercourse between the ori- 
ginal primary consciousness and its derivative vari- 
ants, that we have come to recognize as a distinc- 
tive trait or stigma of the hysterical frailty. The 
perspective of principles that emerged from the 
study of the dissociated consciousness will remain 
equally pertinent to our present pursuit. 

It will be profitable to consider first such in- 
stances of modified personality as leave the pri- 
mary self least disturbed, leave it indeed so slightly 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 335 

affected by the half-acknowledged parasitic life 
that the adjustment to the ordinary conditions of 
existence remains fairly normal. Still more aptly 
would such cases answer the theoretical status de- 
manded by our preliminary triangulation, if the 
transition to the altered state required the consent 
and support of the dominant self, that continues 
somehow to maintain a protectorate over the sur- 
rendered estate. Conditions of this character may 
be found in what are described as trance-states ; 
and the trance, though it at times takes the dis- 
posed subject unawares, yet quite commonly is 
entered upon with some such deliberate assistance 
as attends our awaiting of sleep. The subjective 
status of a trance is not very sharply differentiated 
from that met with in hypnosis and in the more 
pronounced hysterias, but on the whole stands for 
a more superficial degree of disintegration. The 
directive trend of thought is shaped by procedures 
more nearly allied to the normal; the source of 
the "inspirations" is more definitely traceable; it 
occupies and is made known in greater measure to 
the waking consciousness, though the intercourse 
between the two is by no means so open as entirely 
to acquaint each with the affairs and impulses of 
the other. The relation is suggestive of the wak- 
ing occupations of that partially repressed and 
suppressed type, in which under-selves and unreal- 
ized potentialities commonly find solace for the 



33G THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

harsh demands of a strenuous practical life ; for 
these, too, approach sufficiently, even if feebly and 
grudgingly, to the focus of reflective conscious- 
ness, to find illumination by the light of introspec- 
tion. For these combined reasons, an analysis of 
the trance-state furnishes the most suitable intro- 
duction to the study of altered personalities. 

An unusually instructive instance is that re- 
counted by M. Flournoy. 1 Helene Smith — the 
name given to the subject — is described as a 
young woman in good physical health, of an 
impressionable temperament, and as displaying 
certain sporadic though unmistakably hysterical 
symptoms. A decidedly imaginative child, she in- 
dulged passionately in day-dreaming fantasies in 
which she was ever the central figure. She lived 
largely in this fictitious world of romance, in 
which she was not her work-a-day self, but the 
material proxy of some more exalted personage. 
The Cinderella role of her half-credited fables 

1 M. Flournoy 's book has been translated under the title " From 
India to the Planet Mars " (1901) ; the sequel thereto was pub- 
lished (in French only) in 1902. It is altogether a misfortune 
that the spiritualistic cast of the trances, in which Mile. Smith 
acted as a " medium " for a convinced circle, should so decidedly 
mar the psychological portrayal of the plot as the evolution of 
subconsciously developed personalities. M. Flournoy has in a 
measure reduced the irrelevancies, while the English edition has 
aggravated them. Though the development of the case itself, as 
well as the accounts thereof, is decidedly warped by these pre- 
judiced attitudes, the essential outlines of the tale are clear 
enough to deduce therefrom a psychological interpretation. This 
alone is considered in the use of the data that is here attempted. 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 337 

offered a seductive contrast to the commonplace 
surroundings of her modest home in Geneva ; she 
felt estranged from her family, as one destined to 
a higher calling, and even questioned whether 
by chance she were not a changeling. At the age 
of fifteen she was apprenticed to a large shop in 
Geneva, and earned her way to a responsible post 
in this establishment. Throughout the develop- 
ment of the trance-personalities she maintained 
herself in this position, filling her round of duties, 
as a reliable, alert, conscientious, and tactful busi- 
ness woman. This practical occupation may have 
been the salvation of her normal personality, com- 
pelling, as it did, a wholesome absorption in ob- 
jective details, and providing an effective milieu 
for her normal life. It seems probable that, had 
there come no opportunity to stimulate the growth 
of the disintegrating tendencies, they would have 
died a natural death, would have faded away under 
the pressure of the real concerns of practical life. 
The critical issue — the decision of thumbs up or 
thumbs down — was supplied by a dilettante dab- 
bling in spiritualism, which ended in crystalliz- 
ing her subconscious reveries in accordance with 
the conception of impersonations or incarnations 
of departed spirits, and in thus giving them an 
accredited habitation and an inspiring name. 

It will be understood that Mile. Smith's abnor- 
malities previous to the spiritualistic seances re- 
vealed nothing more than an occasional automatic 
intrusion, an absorption in her subconscious ro- 
mancing, so intense as to breed under emotional 
stress a projected hallucination, — the automatic 
response of a susceptible brain to a passionate 
devotion to its own figments. Occasionally, too, 



338 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

her conviction of the reality of her day-dreams 
was strong enough to impart a sense of unre- 
ality to her actual doings; the half-acknowledged 
drama encroached now and then upon her real 
world, and she found herself acting and thinking 
in terms of her fictitious creations. All this hardly 
exceeds the normal vagaries of adolescence, except 
possibly in the vividness with which, in a moment 
of special impressionability, the subconscious con- 
structions assumed the bodily semblance of solid 
flesh. As soon, however, as the seances began, 
and Mile. Smith found that her hand could write 
messages seemingly remote from her control, that 
she could lose herself in a condition in which she 
responded to suggestions and acted upon impulses 
that were imposed by her altered state, the private 
region of her mind blossomed into publicity, and 
the " spirits " found an occupation. 

The most significant personage in this drama 
of dissociation takes the part of guide, philosopher, 
and friend. Psychologically this indicates a suf- 
ficiently disturbing awareness on the part of the 
normal consciousness that certain of the measures 
and thoughts brewed in her mind are not wholly 
composed by her directive self, to induce her to 
find a responsible source for these dissociated 
activities in a foreign personality, with whom, 
in accord with " spirit " doctrine, she communes. 
This assumed guardian of her subconscious life 
she calls "Leopold," and regards him — a sheer bit 
of fancy — as the reembodiment of the adventurer 
Joseph Balsamo, known as Cagliostro (d. 1795). 
Leopold's psychological justification is his ability 
to serve as the bridge that connects the doings of 
her entranced mind with the waking understand- 






THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 339 

ing, to act as interpreter between the two alien- 
ated realms. At times Mile. Smith actually be- 
comes rather than is attended by her dissociated 
self ; and there are occasional intrusions both of 
Leopold and of her dramatic creations into the 
stream of her normal waking life. 1 

By resuming the thread of the plot in succes- 
sive seances, the trance-states have become system- 
atized in turn about three cycles, all gradually 
developed, all at first crude and unadorned, and 
step by step embellished with fantastic details 
under the encouragement of a devoted and im- 
pressed clientele. The setting of the scene of one 
of the dramas upon the planet Mars afforded a 
welcome security from verification, and set free the 
natural impulse to present things as fantastically 
transformed in the alembic of a luxurious though 

1 In many eases of hysteria the initial crisis seems to have been 
occasioned by a violent shock of an emotional nature. Many writers 
regard this as an almost constant and permanently significant 
factor in the development of the malady. It is quite clear that 
the extreme impressionability of the nervous system of hystericals 
to these organic shocks leads to a revival of the experience in 
memory, and to a recurrent shock whenever the recollection of 
the scene is aroused by any association, direct or indirect, with 
the original circumstance. This revival may often be of an unre- 
flective subconscious type, and is apt to induce the moment of 
dissociation and the consequent cleft of personality. The pre- 
sent case exhibits a partial conformity to this view in an incident 
of Mile. Smith's girlhood in which she was badly frightened by a 
dog, and seems to have been rescued by a priest. Quite a number 
of her hallucinations have disclosed a man in monk's garb ; and 
the original scene has reappeared in some of her trance-states. 
This shock or traumatic aspect of the genesis of hysterical attacks 
appears in other cases, presently to be cited. 



340 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

somewhat juvenile imagination. The characters 
are the departed relatives of inquiring friends, 
who are communing through Mile. Smith's me- 
diumship, and to whom are brought messages 
through her writing and speaking while entranced. 
Nothing thus revealed is particularly notable ; and 
the interest is confined to the state of the " me- 
dium " while thus engaged. These states differ in 
the degree to which they induce unawareness of 
surroundings, loss of memory upon awakening, 
and altered sensibilities ; the more vivid and sus- 
tained impersonations occur in the deeper stages 
into which Leopold plunges her by making passes, 
naturally through the agency of her own hands. 
Her communications take the form of the rapping 
of "Yes" and "No," or by automatic writing of 
her "controlled" hand, or by direct speaking 
through her voice ; any of these methods may at 
times serve to interpret messages that come to her 
as visions, as auditory hallucinations, or as enforced 
impulses. Characteristic of the possession by an 
altered personality is the consistent change of hand- 
writing, as one or another of the impersonated 
individuals writes through her entranced hand ; 
or of tone, diction, and expression, when speaking 
through her voice. The sentiment and the situ- 
ation are so realistically felt as to arouse by sug- 
gestion, in the impressionable, semi-automatic con- 
sciousness, the appropriate channels of expression. 
Much of this may be more akin to the dramatic 
objectification of a half-acknowledged invention 
than to a distinct lapse of personality ; the actor 
is not wholly lost in his part, or, if we prefer to 
say so, the entranced personality is not immune 
to the histrionic phase of its own conduct ; yet 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 341 

it presents just that complexion of self-centred 
motives by which, in susceptible minds, quite real 
lapses of personality are favored. 

That in thus assuming an altered personality, 
the normal self does not burn all its bridges be- 
hind it, is well shown by the occurrence of an 
intermediate state, in which the scenes from the 
Martian episode are again projected before her 
half-awake fancy, and enable her conscious pencil 
to sketch the revelations. These prove to be 
merely bizarre distortions — feebly suggestive of 
the pictorial travesties of Lear's Nonsense Botany 
— of quite earthly fauna and flora and the scenery 
and habitations of terrestrial man. Unquestionably 
the most notable product of this altered person- 
ality is the Martian language. As the events of 
this cycle were developed from week to week, the 
approach of a new and sensational feature was 
heralded. At first meaningless words in a strange 
jargon were heard, and their purport tentatively 
guessed ; then her lips uttered the uninterpreted 
words, speaking in curt phrases ; later, after fur- 
ther incubations, brief sentences were written in 
the new language, but in Roman characters; and 
finally came the crowning invention, in fulfillment 
of Leopold's promise, in the form of a seemingly 
well-rehearsed message in the Martian alphabet. 
All this goes on subconsciously without explicitly 
arousing the direction of the waking conscious- 
ness, which remains unaware (with the peculiar 
type of unawareness that is characteristic of a dis- 
sociated state not wholly sundered from the cen- 
tral consciousness) of the meaning or the origin 
of these linguistic symbols. Unquestionably as a 
memory feat, on the part of any type of depend- 



342 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ent personality, the achievement is creditable. Yet 
one is prepared for the discovery revealed by an 
analysis of the structure of the Martian sentences, 
that they prove to be closely modeled upon French, 
the only language that Mile. Smith knows well. It 
may require no special originality to devise such an 
alphabet, but to hold in mind the strange forms 
and to combine them consistently into equally 
artificial words, argues a vivid power of visualizing 
of which there is much corroborative evidence. It 
appears, indeed, that many of the scenes that Mile. 
Smith so dramatically presents come to her as 
visions, which are then set to words and move- 
ment. The revelations of Martian scenery and the 
hallucinations that project themselves from her 
suppressed fancies into her waking life are quite 
constantly of marked visual vividness, with an 
objective realism rich in detail. 

Another conventional trance-drama materializes 
a Hindoo cycle, in which Mile. Smith's role is that 
of the wife of a Persian sheik of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. In the most dramatic scene, which she enacts 
largely by pantomime, she is compelled by the 
customs of her race to throw herself upon her hus- 
band's funeral pyre; before her self-sacrifice she 
tears from her person the ornaments appropriate to 
an Asiatic princess, — rings, bracelets, necklace, 
earrings, girdle, anklets, — and with the expression 
of resolute devotion mingled with growing terror, 
she ascends the pile, — then collapses in a state 
of physical exhaustion, from which Leopold gradu- 
ally restores her to a normal condition. A more 
joyous scene from the same drama consists in the 
reading of love letters from her royal fiance, the 
whole presented with realistic rendering of emo- 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 343 

lion. Throughout both the Martian and the Hin- 
doo cycles, there is introduced a fair variety of 
fanciful episodes that give complexity to the plot, 
which, it must be recalled, is developed in response 
to the suggestions of the sitters and the stimulus 
of her own invention, in successive seances cover- 
ing a period of weeks or months. While testifying 
to the genius of the "medium's " constructive fan- 
tasy and dramatic talent, they afford no deeper 
insight into the psychology of the trance itself. 

The third impersonation introduces a more mod- 
ern setting ; the medium becomes Marie Antoinette, 
and her mentor appears in his historical character 
of Balsamo, who presents himself as a devoted sub- 
ject of the queen. For hours at a time, Mile. Smith 
poses as Marie Antoinette, speaks in the manner of 
royalty, converts the companions assembled about 
her into a royal court, carries on a conversation 
with Balsamo, whom she calls her cher sorcier, 
partakes of material food at a banquet in disregard 
of her normal appetite, apparently insensitive to 
alcoholic potations that would prove disastrous to 
her normal self, and convincingly exchanges her 
real for the fictitious personality. 

The precise status of the parasitic life that 
reaches distinctive expression in the trances is sig- 
nificantly indicated by the manner of its origin, 
by the intrusion of these personalities into the con- 
cerns of the daily life, and by certain occurrences 
during the trance that reveal the measure to which 
the normal self has withdrawn to give way to the 
fantastic impersonations. In general it is true that 
the personal hold of these constructions increased 
as the plot developed; seemingly, at their origin, 
they were held apart in a detached area of her con- 



344 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

sciousness, coquetted with as half real and as half 
make-believe ; while with continued indulgence, the 
characters of her trance-stage became wholly real 
citizens of a remote but mentally accessible realm, 
from whom occasional visits to privileged 'proteges 
might be expected. Accordingly, Mile. Smith was 
sufficiently acquainted with the appearance of the 
Martian and other personages to recognize them 
when they appeared as hallucinations. Such vi- 
sions, while most common at the moments of fall- 
ing asleep or of waking, came occasionally during 
working hours. The characters appeared in proper 
costume, spoke the language of their race ; and in 
departing left so clear an impression upon the 
seer's mind as to enable her to record the sound of 
the words that she had just heard, and to sketch 
what had been revealed. During the incubation of 
the Martian alphabet, she saw in clear daylight 
a broad horizontal bar changing from flame color 
to brick-red, to rose, against which appeared some 
strange characters, — recognized at once as the 
promised Martian alphabet. It was through such 
automatic revival in a nearly waking condition 
that the detailed description of Mars and India 
was secured; nor was the more familiar environ- 
ment of the royal cycle excluded from this manifes- 
tation. At one time she was haunted by glimpses 
of a large French salon, in which was enacted a 
domestic scene appropriate to the life of Marie 
Antoinette. Of quite similar status, though often 
more vague and with greater personal appeal, were 
the brief messages or warnings that came to her 
as premonitions. Upon one occasion she was sit- 
ting at her desk, when suddenly she heard spoken 
the words, "Until this evening." In the evening 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 345 

she felt uneasy, essayed automatic writing, and 
found that the pencil conveyed a long message 
to relieve her disquietude. It thus appears that an 
intermittent intercourse was maintained between 
her trance personalities and the active self of the 
daily life. Quite possibly the more detailed of 
these visions involved a partial return to a trance- 
state ; but the briefer ones came as intrusions into 
a moment of clear consciousness, and are sug- 
gestive of an eruption from the submerged area 
in which during practical occupations these half- 
acknowledged creations disport themselves. 

While the other personages have but an inci- 
dental share in her waking life, it is natural that 
Leopold, who represents the more personal phase 
of her dissociation, should appear most frequently, 
and have power not alone to enter her thoughts, 
but to affect her conduct and impulses. At times 
he is content to send messages through automatic 
writing, in which he gives assurance of his concern 
for her welfare, offers consolation for the trials 
of her daily life, makes predictions of interesting 
events to come, or pronounces a ban to forbid 
compliance with what her friends have asked of her. 
It was he who on one occasion barred the street 
that led by the most direct route to her home and 
forced her to take a circuitous path, though the 
reason for this precaution never appeared ; it was 
he who interfered by paralyzing her arm when she 
was lifting a heavy piece of cloth from the shelves, 
as a warning that this was too severe a tax upon her 
strength ; it was he, too, who appeared at moments 
of emotional excitement, such as that of receiving 
the news that a benevolent lady, interested in Mile. 
Smith's mediumship, had supplied the means to 



346 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

enable her to devote herself wholly to this cause. 
Just as she was entering a street-car to bring the 
joyous tidings to her family, Leopold appeared, 
which portent she interpreted to mean that she 
must first go to the shop to bid farewell to her 
employers. Apart from these incidental intrusions, 
Mile. Smith was quite free to carry on her active 
life as her commanding self directed ; her motor 
channels were unaffected by the foreign invasion, 
which occupied — always in a superficial, not very 
intimate or usurping temper — the less substan- 
tial world of longings and dreams. 1 

1 Though exceptional, it is possible to find an incident from the 
trance-experience persisting into an active moment : thus she was 
troubled for a time by the hallucination of a straw hat which she 
saw in a definite position about three feet off ; and it proved that 
her eyes were fixed upon this object in the impressionable moment 
of awaking from the trance. Again, she had the feeling for some 
days of something grasping her left wrist, a feeling that to her 
seemed causeless, but was due to the violent wrenching, while en- 
tranced, of a bracelet from her arm. To these instances a single 
useful subconscious impression affecting her practical life may 
be added : She was questioned by one of the salesmen as to the 
disposal of a piece of goods, and gave her impression that it had 
been sent for inspection to a certain customer; while speaking, the 
number eighteen loomed up in her mental vision ; whereupon she 
ventured the further opinion that this had been done just eighteen 
days ago. The impression thus projected through subconscious 
channels proved to be correct. 

Evidence of the converse relation by which events of her con- 
scious waking experience reappear in the trance-doings is readily 
found ; the general interpretation here offered involves this rela- 
tion, though not in an open, fully acknowledged intercourse. It is 
likewise interesting to note that occasional "asides," not intended 
for the medium's personal ear, are heard and heeded. Upon one 
occasion Marie Antoinette accepted and smoked a cigarette ; but 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 347 

These details are as typically significant o£ the 
hysterical status of Mile. Smith's trance as of the 
occasional disintegrating- tendencies of her wak- 
ing moments. It is just this status that removes 
the phenomena from the field of conscious acting, 
and equally from the field of more deep-seated dis- 
integration, of more thorough and organic loss of 
mental stability. The type of dissociated-minded- 
ness that this narrative so interestingly represents 
exhibits a sporadic and again an acknowledged 
form of intercourse between conscious and sub- 
conscious modes of assimilation and elaboration ; 
yet it illustrates as well how the variety of dis- 
sociation that here prevails, though presenting 
equally systematic contours, does not penetrate so 
deeply into the mental tissue as those presently 
to be described. The mental cleavage is of a kind 
that permits readier communication between the 
two realms, and likewise remains so uninvolved 
that the dominant trends of thought, and particu- 
larly the dominant occupations and the channel of 
their expression, are but incidentally encroached 
upon. So far as the interests of the normal active 
life are concerned, the dissociated personality may 
be said to be endured, possibly cherished, but is 
not embraced. 

the unfavorable comments provoked by this liberty prevented its 
recurrence in succeeding stances. The dissociated personalities 
proved themselves thus alike versatile and educable. 



348 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The lines of cleavage in disjointed personalities 
may be so variously contoured that the individu- 
ality of the resulting alterations becomes their 
most conspicuous feature. The portrayal of each 
instance might profitably take the form of a char- 
acter-study and proceed with the genetic method 
of a biography. From our present point of ap- 
proach to the intimate phases of abnormal self- 
transformation, a system of paths radiates : we 
might quite logically proceed to consider cases of 
alternating personalities, in which an aggravated 
change of mood, conditioned by organic instabil- 
ity, induces an alternate fluctuation from a normal 
to an abnormal condition ; we might equally well 
look for further enlightenment to instances in 
which a sudden shock cuts from its moorings a 
well-orientated life, and sends it adrift, without 
chart or compass, upon unfamiliar waters ; like- 
wise might we inquire how far a similarly condi- 
tioned disaster may give rise merely to the curtail- 
ment of the personal acquisitions, the degradation 
of a complex, organized, cultured, matured self, 
to an artless, untutored, bereft, weakened counter- 
part ; also are we prepared to meet with disinte- 
grations that ensue upon so slight a prompting 
of the unstable tissue, that quick and fleeting 
transitions of personal phases will be further com- 
plicated by the mutual relations engendered be- 
tween differently dissociated selves, as these par- 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 349 

tial and disenfranchised personalities come in touch 
with one another's doings. All these types of 
divided self -functioning have in common a marked 
invasion by the derivative personality of the 
sphere of active life, — a usurpation more or less 
enduring of the established throne, and a conse- 
quent disorganization of the several policies and 
practical interests of the realm. These deep mu- 
tations of the self -feelings are not held at arm's 
length in a semi-objective contemplation, but are 
incorporated with and at times replace the ele- 
mental psychic tissue that is the most intimate 
embodiment of our inner being. While each of 
these aspects of impaired personality will in turn 
receive attention, it seems more advantageous to 
proceed at once to a decidedly involved case, com- 
bining in a single narrative an unusually interest- 
ing and clearly exhibited group of psychological 
disintegrations. It may stand as a type of extreme 
personal instability, of hysterical genesis, the dis- 
sociative fissures of which appear readily and va- 
riously, and traverse deeply and intricately the 
organic strata of the mental structure. 1 

1 The case is the subject of a volume by Dr. Morton Prince, 
entitled The Dissociation of a Personality (1905). Its value is 
greatly enhanced by the care and insight with which the devel- 
opment has been portrayed, interpreted, and directed. Dr. Prince 
has furnished the narrative with such enlightening comments that 
a study of the original is necessary to obtain an adequate account 
of the significance of the complex tale. 



350 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

Miss Beauchamp, the subject of a remarkable 
tragedy of conflicting selves, may be said to have 
developed no extraordinary abnormalities until 
early or late adolescence. Distinctly impression- 
able, given to much day-dreaming, morbidly reti- 
cent and absorbed in an inner life of her own 
fancies, devoted to intellectual rather than to prac- 
tical pursuits, and assimilating the actual events 
of her life with so intensely emotional and personal 
a coloring that the objective situations were habit- 
ually transformed into the subjective terms of 
her imagination, she furnished the suitable soil 
for mental disintegration to which the accidents 
of unfortunate circumstance * brought the favoring 
climatic conditions. At the age of twenty-three, 
when she came under Dr. Prince's care, she was a 
successful and enthusiastic student at college, well 
regarded by her friends, though recognized by 

1 The death of her mother, with whom she stood upon strained 
relations ; further domestic complications that led to her running 
away from home at the age of sixteen ; an emotional shock at 
eighteen, due to the shattering of her ideals by an experience 
to which only a morbid disposition would attach extreme import 
(though it is this incident that figures as the trauma that engenders 
the cleft of personality), — these are some of the accidents of the 
case. The early tokens of liability to dissociation took the form 
of occasional attacks of somnambulism, in one of which she was 
brought home by a night-watchman ; frequent lapses or spells of 
distraction ; vagaries of character sufficiently pronounced to have 
her known among her companions as " original " or " queer; " and 
intensely emotional and self-centred reactions to the trivial inci- 
dents of life. Yet Miss B. grew up in the main quite as number- 
less other young women, who have met with similar vicissitudes, 
have experienced like mental and moral misgivings, have displayed 
similar traits of character, and yet have wholly escaped the disin- 
tegrating tendencies that fell to her lot. 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 351 

many as of a decidedly nervous, possibly erratic 
temperament. 1 

It is true, then, of Miss B. at the period of her 
greatest personal instability that " she may change 
her personality from time to time, often from hour 
to hour, and with each change her character be- 
comes transformed and her memories altered. In 
addition to the Real, Original or Normal Self, the 
Self that was born and which she was intended 
by nature to be, she may be any one of three 
different persons. I say three different persons 
because, although making use of the same body, 
each, nevertheless, has a distinctly different char- 
acter; a difference manifested by different trains 
of thought, by different views, beliefs, ideals, and 
temperaments, and by different acquisitions, tastes, 
habits, experiences, and memories. Each varies in 
these respects from the other two, and from the 
original Miss Beauchamp. Two of these personal- 
ities have no knowledge of each other or of the 
third, excepting such information as may be ob- 
tained by inference or second hand, so that in the 
memory of each of these two there are blanks 
which correspond to the time when the others are 
in the flesh. Of a sudden one or the other wakes 
up to find herself, she knows not where, and 
ignorant of what she has said or done the moment 
before. Only one of the three has knowledge of 
the lives of the others, and this one presents such 

1 One must anticipate the natural unfoldment of events by 
announcing at the outset that this Miss B. who presented herself 
for medical treatment proved to be a variant personality, and not 
the original and real self. This long unsuspected condition offered 
the most baffling factor in the problem, and was solved only after 
prolonged and ingenious experimentation. 



352 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

a bizarre character, so far removed from the others 
in individuality, that the transformation from one 
of the other personalities to herself is one of the 
most striking and dramatic features of the case. 
The personalities come and go in kaleidoscopic 
succession, many changes often being made in the 
course of twenty-four hours. And so it happens 
that Miss Beauchamp, if I may use the name to 
designate several distinct people, at one moment 
says and does and plans and arranges something 
to which a short time before she most strongly 
objected, indulges tastes which a moment before 
would have been abhorrent to her ideals, and 
undoes or destroys what she had just laboriously 
planned and arranged." The social difficulties of 
such a situation are readily imagined, particularly 
in so conscientious and truthful a character as the 
subject of these episodes possessed. " To be frank 
and open, and yet not to ' give away ' the fact 
that she has not the remotest idea, at moments 
when she comes to herself, of how she happens to 
be in a given situation, or what her interrogator is 
talking about, or even who he is, taxes her innate 
sense of truth, though it has developed a capa- 
city for intellectual gymnastics and quick infer- 
ence which is instructive. Her power in any one of 
the three characters of taking in a new situation, 
of jumping at correct inferences of what has gone 
before, of following leads without betraying her 
own ignorance, of formulating a reply which allows 
of an interpretation compatible with almost any 
set of conditions, — her ingenuity in these direc- 
tions is surprising ; and by showing what can be 
done by shrewd leads, guesses, and deftly worded 
responses, gives one an inkling as to the possible 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 353 

origin of much of the supposed super-normal know- 
ledge of mediums. In the case of Miss Beauchamp 
this is, of course, compulsory from the necessity 
of adapting her divided personality to the demands 
of social life." 

Disregarding for the moment which phase or 
merged phases of the manifold personality will 
eventually prove to be the original, we may con- 
sider them as interrelated though conflicting as- 
pects of an abnormally maturing individual. Most 
insistent when in the ascendancy, and most requir- 
ing suppression on the part of the personality 
striving to be dominant, is the personification of 
the opposing forces encountered in self-examina- 
tion by every seeker of a sound and sincere indi- 
viduality. This organized opposition — suggestive 
of " der Geist der stets verneint " — ■ is naturally 
the one that most consciously engages the at- 
tention, is the force to be reckoned with in the 
struggle for existence amongst the rival personal- 
ities. To this demonic phase of her impulses the 
name of "Sally" was attached. 1 It may be best 

1 I am describing the multiple Beauchamp growth at the period 
of its mature efflorescence. The budding of the " Sally " personal- 
ity is interesting : she appeared first as a variant of the hypnotized 
Miss B. The hypnotic procedure, instead of inducing a dissociation 
towards the " Miss B." group of possibilities, aroused the " Sally " 
group, — an issue suggestive of the fact that the latter aspect of 
the self had been for some time germinating in a private niche of 
her being. This hypnotic self, so contrasted in manner to Miss B. 
in a similar state, tried to get her eyes open by rubbing them, and 
by this release to emerge from a chrysalis to a butterfly state. In 
this attempt she was thwarted ; but she watched her opportunity, 
and found it when the waking Miss B. fell into a spell of abstrac- 
tion. She rubbed her eyes, and there was Sally, able to see and 
to enter upon her active career. At first she was much alarmed at 



354 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

to begin with some concrete illustrations of these 
dramatic struggles, prefacing only that the lapsing 
into " Sally " was at times spontaneous, at times 
the issue of a strong but fruitless struggle, at times 
a seemingly voluntary recall, while the departure 
of Sally either happened spontaneously, or was 
volitionally brought about by this personality put- 
ting herself into a state of abstraction. There was 
no love lost between them; and Sally, who had 
with some difficulty achieved such independence 
of action, took an impish delight in preparing 
torments for her other self. Miss B., who had an 
abhorrence of insects and reptiles, found a box 
neatly wrapped, from which, as she opened it, six 
spiders ran out. Sally, who claimed to be subcon- 
sciously present to witness the effect of her prac- 
tical joke, thus describes the incident : " She 
screamed when she opened the box, and they 
ran out all over the room." Special expeditions 
into the country were made to secure spiders and 
snakes and toads, — walks that were altogether 
too taxing for Miss B.'s strength. Sally never 
felt fatigue ; yet naturally their common body 
showed the effect of such a strain. On one such 
occasion Sally went to a suburban town, where 
she waked herself up as Miss B., who, utterly 
stranded and without money in her pocket, was 
obliged to make the journey back on foot, arriv- 
ing utterly exhausted. To torment Miss B., Sally 

her illicit success, and was anxious to recall Miss B. She accom- 
plished this bit of magic by burning her hand with the end of a 
cigarette. Naturally Miss B. soon became acquainted with Sally's 
meddlesome doings. It is well to note that at the outset Miss B. 
knew nothing of any of the other personalities. The account above 
given refers to the period after such knowledge had been gained. 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 355 

would unravel the worsted work upon which the 
former was engaged, and when she permitted its 
completion, " pulled the whole of it to pieces, and 
drawing out the yarn wound it round about the 
furniture, carrying it from picture to picture, 
back to the different articles of furniture, then 
round herself many times, then back to the fur- 
niture, finally hiding the ends somewhere in the 
bed. Then Sally, standing in the midst of this 
perfect tangle of yarn, wakened Miss Beauchamp, 
who came to herself in the maze. So great was 
the tangle that she had to cut the yarn to get 
out." Sally likewise invades the premises of Miss 
B.'s intentions and coerces her to tell nonsensical 
lies, and to act upon impulses which the latter 
entirely repudiates, or is compelled with much 
embarrassment to explain away. Likewise she 
chastens by imposing penance, wise or foolish, and 
generally inconvenient. Discovering that Miss B. 
has been careless in money matters, Sally takes 
charge of the purse and hides all the money, leav- 
ing only enough in sight for car-fare and the most 
penurious allowance. 1 

1 This state of warfare existed between Sally and each of the 
personalities that in turn was dominant. It consisted not only in 
mental onslaughts, insinuations, upbraidings, and vituperations, but 
also extended into the field of material entanglements, and occa- 
sionally into threatened or actual bodily harm. Upon one excep- 
tional occasion Sally not only badly scratched Miss B.'s arms, but 
rubbed alcohol and lemon juice into the scratches, pretending that 
these irritants were remedies. It is interesting to record that when 
Sally's spite took the form of a threat to cut off Miss B.'s hair, the 
click of the shears was sufficient to wake up Miss B. and to pre- 
vent the disaster. Sally could at times be subdued by threats of 
ether or the hospital, provided she was convinced that the threats 
would be executed. 



356 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

This cat-and-dog life was endured for months 
and even years, though with temporary truces and 
fluctuations of advantage. The personalities were 
sufficiently independent to arrange formal com- 
munication between them. Sally would write notes 
to Miss B. and pin the messages about the room 
for the latter to find. Indeed, the intrusions of this 
mischievous self were so sudden and so constant as 
to seem to require the supposition of an attendant 
consciousness (though Dr. Prince is careful not 
to commit himself to this interpretation) that 
listened even when Miss B. was the waking per- 
sonality, that was able to remain in touch with 
the sequence both of her own doings and of those 
of Miss B. The relation became so intricate that 
Sally actually tried to impersonate Miss B., and 
masqueraded successfully in borrowed plumes until 
certain crucial tests exposed the deception. It 
appears that while Sally has knowledge of Miss 
B.'s ordinary doings, she does not possess Miss 
B.'s culture, being indeed quite contemptuous 
of books and study. Miss B. knows French, but 
Sally does not ; and Miss B. has some knowledge 
of shorthand, of which Sally is ignorant. Miss 
B.'s conscious acquisitions, achieved by deliberate, 
alert effort, are thus removed from the ken of the 
subconscious and alternating Sally. On the other 
hand, Miss B. knows next to nothing of Sally 
except by inference, and through special com- 
munication, and describes the lapses which she 
feels during the latter's ascendancy by saying 
that she has " lost time ; " while Sally describes 
her own subjective feeling when she is trying to 
come to the surface but is constrained in her 
efforts, as " being squeezed." 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 357 

In the warfare between the two, strategy is 
often the better part of valor. At a time when a 
journey to Europe had been made possible by in- 
terested friends, Miss B.'s condition was so uncer- 
tain as to require special care in a hospital. Upon 
receiving favorable reports of her improvement, 
Dr. Prince was suspicious, and found the follow- 
ing state of affairs : " It came to light that Sally 
had conceived the idea that, as she herself was 
free from ailments, if she could impersonate Miss 
Beauchamp, she would be considered well, and 
so escape from the hospital and go to Europe, as 
had been previously planned. So, when the night 
nurse looked in upon her, Sally was always found 
c asleep ; ' the day nurse had an equally good re- 
port to make, and Miss Beauchamp was soon, in 
spite of my warnings, discharged ' well.' A few 
days after this I caught Sally just in time, on the 
verge of her departure for Europe, and changed 
her, against her will, to Miss Beauchamp, who was 
astounded to find herself in my office, her last 
recollection being her entrance into the hospital 
ten days previously. It was thus by a lucky chance 
that Sally did not go to Europe instead of Miss 
Beauchamp." The measure of control that Sally 
possesses was well illustrated in her determination 
at a critical juncture that Miss B. should not 
be awakened. "Arguments, expostulations, even 
threats were of no avail. She did not want to be the 
other one, of whom she spoke in contempt. She 
simply defied me to wake Miss Beauchamp, and in 
fact every attempt on my part was unsuccessful. 
Finally we compromised ; she agreed to allow Miss 
Beauchamp to be awakened, and I, on my part, 
agreed (may the ruse be pardoned !) that Sally 



358 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

should come again when Miss Beauchamp was 
well."" We begin to appreciate why, in view of 
the marked differences of character which Miss B. 
and Sally and the personality that emerged later 
presented, Dr. Prince confesses to a temptation 
to call his volume u The Saint, the Woman, and 
the Devil." 

The struggles between the saintly and the dia- 
bolical aspects of character having been thus 
sketched, it becomes necessary, in further exposi- 
tion of the intricate drama, to consider that these 
several unstable personalities are more or less sub- 
ject to suggestion. Through the usual sugges- 
tions Miss B. may be hypnotized and so may Sally ; 
though the latter' s hypnotic state is not so mark- 
edly different from her other, and Sally knows well 
what she does while hypnotized. But the hypno- 
tized Miss B. becomes so sturdy and intelligent a 
person as to suggest that the group of faculties 
thus aroused may be a very important expression 
of a well-organized realm of her multiple being. 
The relations of these overlapping personalities 
to each other are too complex to be summarized ; 
but the vital factor therein may be expressed (in 
the light of the final solution) by stating that Miss 
B., in the process of being hypnotized, became 
synthesized into the personality that would result 
from hypnotizing the original self. Conversely, 
in awakening from the hypnotic trance, it might 
be expected that the awakening should take the 
direction of the highly hysterical Miss B.; or 
again, that it should emerge as the original self, 
as that self was presumably constituted previous 
to the catastrophe that overthrew the stability of 
her personal character. 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 359 

The missing act of the drama that was needed 
to give coherence to the argument was unexpect- 
edly discovered, about a year after Miss B. was 
placed under Dr. Prince's care. To his surprise, 
he found her one evening in a wholly novel con- 
dition. It soon appeared that she did not know 
him, evidently mistaking him for some one else, 
was equally in illusion in regard to where she was, 
and had totally lost all remembrance of the entire 
chain of her life's history back to a critical experi- 
ence of some six years past. This experience is the 
one already referred to as the occasion of the first 
serious lapse of personality. The scene in ques- 
tion took place at night in a hospital in which 
the original Miss B. was then fitting herself to be 
a nurse. The shock was occasioned by the sudden 
appearance of an intimate friend, — a man quite a 
little older than herself, towards whom she enter- 
tained mingled feelings of affection and regard, 
doubtless of an adolescent type. In a spirit of fun 
he had climbed a ladder as if to enter the build- 
ing through a window ; and later there ensued an 
exciting conversation between him and Miss B. 
Through the arrival of a note from this friend 
suggestive of the conversation of that memora- 
ble night, she had now reverted to the scene of 
this disturbing occasion. 1 Dr. Prince became to 
her through a hallucination the man in question. 
She upbraided him for his indiscreet behavior, 

1 The channel through which these incidents became known at 
this stage was the agency of the hypnotized self. The suggestion 
given to Miss B. in this condition that she should remember what 
had occurred at the Public Library, where the message from the 
friend had reached her, resulted in the revelation so essential to 
further comprehension and treatment of the case. 



360 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

inquired whether he had knocked at the door, and 
in answer to Dr. Prince's natural affirmation that 
he had, she expressed surprise at his audacity, and 
strenuously denied his statement as well as his 
later claim that he was Dr. Prince, and that she 
had seen him during the earlier part of the even- 
ing before the change of personality occurred. 

It will be well at this stage to summarize the 
argument of this intricate drama of shifting selves, 
with its quick changes of scene, its confusing 
entrances and exits, its alternating situations of 
tragic strife and embarrassing comedies of errors. 
It has been set forth that the personality that 
had been dominant (for about five years) when 
Dr. Prince first met Miss B., was in no acceptable 
sense her true self, but represented a divergent 
and dissociated phase of the complete personality. 
The second role in the dramatis personae is that 
of the individual whose life ceased with the criti- 
cal incident that seems to have occasioned the 
volcanic disruption of character, and was resumed 
under a like associative shock some six years later. 
Calling to aid a numerical assignment of parts, Dr. 
Prince calls the Miss B. whom he first met B I, 
and the character obtained in hypnosis B II ; Sally 
figures as B III, and this reawakened personality 
becomes B IV. It must constantly be borne in 
mind that the six years' gap in B IV 's personal re- 
collections of herself naturally remained unfilled 
except in so far as she could incidentally ascer- 
tain details about her lapsed self through Sally, 
or through shrewd guessing, " fishing," as Sally 
called it. Sally seemed not to understand why B IV 
should be thus ignorant, and for a long time spoke 
of this personality as " the Idiot." Equally, now 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 361 

that the state had reappeared, though not perma- 
nently, did B I remain in ignorance of what was 
done while B IV was in possession ; while the priv- 
ilege of Sally was that of a complete acquaintance 
with B I's reflections and actions. It is by such 
intimate mind-reading that she can anticipate and 
thwart B I's plans. Sally knows nothing of B IV's 
thoughts by introspection, though she is able to 
note as if she were a witness what B IV actually 
does. Let it next be understood that though 
B IV has the memories previous to the hospital 
incident that rightly belong to the real Miss 
Beauchamp, yet she is not the original, fully inte- 
grated character. Naturally, the great defect is 
her ignorance of her career as B I ; but this is 
not all : her character shows unmistakable diver- 
gence from the traits that the original character 
seemed likely to possess, a portion of its more wor- 
thy phases being clearly embodied in the moral 
traits of B I. Dr. Prince's efforts after B IV's 
appearances had become more frequent and more 
stable, were concentrated upon fusing B I and 
B IV, aiming to give each a memory of the other's 
doings and concerns, and the unified feeling of a 
common individuality. One method consisted in 
arranging a meeting upon neutral ground, which 
was the hypnotic field of B II, and there emphat- 
ically and repeatedly suggesting that the per- 
sonality that would wake up would have all the 
memories of B I and B IV combined, would in- 
deed be both of these in one. Another and more 
satisfactory method consisted in suggesting to 
B II, who actually possessed the combined mem- 
ories of B I and B IV, and who by the theory 
adopted was the hypnotized real self, that she 



362 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

should wake up, but remain herself without split- 
ting into either the group B I or B IV. In this 
process Sally, B III, had also to be reckoned with ; 
and upon the first occasion upon which this merg- 
ing was attempted, the result was to summon a 
wholly distrait, "rattled" person, seemingly in- 
capable of realizing herself or her surroundings. 
Later, Sally confessed that this fiasco was a token 
of her interference ; and when at length, after 
heroic resistance, she had become reconciled to 
her own destruction, she consented to the waking 
up of the hypnotized personality into the real, 
original self. Of this " New Person " it is noted 
that her character was neither that of B I nor 
B IV. " She had lost the reserve, the depression, 
the emotionability, and the idealism of B I ; but 
she had lost the quick temper, the lack of faith, 
the resentment, and the cynicism of B IV. She 
was a person of even temperament, frank and 
open in address — one who seemed to be natural 
and simple in her modes of thought and manner. 
Yet she more closely resembled B I, and might 
fairly be regarded as B I restored to a condition 
of healthy-mindedness." 

With the ascendancy of B II over Sally, by 
which there was an incorporation of B I with 
B IV, the new personality was brought to life. 
She gradually acquired dominion over her own 
estates by discarding the idiosyncrasies of her 
partial personifications, by absorbing their more 
sterling traits, and by strengthening the issues of 
their union. The process was more than a cement- 
ing of memories, more than a concordant pooling 
of interests : it was a fusion of personal traits 
through selective affinity, an organic growth of 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 363 

new tissue sequent to the healing of old wounds. 
Naturally, so intimate a process proceeded gradu- 
ally : the real Miss Beauchamp came more fre- 
quently and more spontaneously, and remained 
steadfast, with only transient displacement by the 
old selves in periods of severe emotional strain. 
This consummated Miss Beauchamp may be re- 
garded not only as the real personality, 1 but her 
existence and the quality of her character seem 
needed to impart a consistent set of motives and 
explanations to the otherwise irreconcilable situ- 
ations of the narrative. The shrewd pursuit of the 
theoretical clues through which the legitimate 
mental claimant was found, and the tactful use of 
procedures thus grounded upon a psychological 
analysis, to effect the restoration to the estate, are 

1 It is hardly possible to set forth the complex claims to recog- 
nition of the restored Miss Beauchamp as the real self. The 
superior stability is reflected in traits that are more readily re- 
cognized than described. Release from marked suggestibility, free- 
dom from wayward intrusions, consistency of traits and manner, 
evenness of temperament, control of associations and conduct, are 
all factors of a normally unified personality, that this new self 
clearly exhibited. Dr. Prince proposes various formula to repre- 
sent the original disintegration and the subsequent synthesis. Sub- 
stantially he suggests that the original Miss Beauchamp showed 
disposition to disintegrate along two divergent lines of cleavage. 
If the fissure were occasioned by one set of strains, B I appears ; 
and if by another, B IV. These partial personalities are themselves 
subject to a relief of disintegration during the hypnotic condition. 
It thus becomes true that B I and B IV when hypnotized become 
the same person, B II ; and the awakening of this person into a 
synthesis of B I and B IV effects the reconstruction of the original 
self. B III remains an interfering and differently related phase 
of her being, cannot be harmonized with these, and must be sac- 
rificed in the consummation. 



364 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

equally noteworthy features of this significant 
contribution to the comprehension of altered per- 
sonalities. 

The most convenient method of illustrating the 
manner of intercourse, both of cooperation and of 
opposition, that exists between the several frac- 
tions of this wholly disintegrated self will be to 
select from the great mass of incidents a few whose 
interpretation is alike direct and enlightening. 
Decidedly significant is the fact that the personal- 
ity that goes by the name of Sally is at once the 
subconscious mentor and the intruding opposition. 
Actions that Miss B. performs in moments of dis- 
traction will accordingly be recorded in the mem- 
ory of the subconscious Sally. Sally's powers in 
this direction are neatly shown in the following 
incident, related in her own words : " She yester- 
day received a letter from a photographer. She 
had it in her hand while walking down Washing- 
ton Street, and then put it into her pocket (side 
pocket of coat) where she kept her watch and 
money (banknotes). As She walked along, She 
took out the money and tore it into pieces, think- 
ing it was the letter from the photographer. She 
threw the money into the street as She said to 
herself, i I wish they would not write on this bond 
paper.' " As further proof of Sally's knowledge, 
she quoted the entire letter verbatim. Sally's 
undisguised glee at the discomfiture that Miss B. 
would experience upon discovering the loss of 
her money discloses the nature of her animosity. 
Miss B. was now awakened, and acknowledged that 
she had received such a letter, which, however, 
she had torn up, but that she had in her pocket 
two ten-dollar notes. She put her hand in her 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 365 

pocket and with great surprise found only the let- 
ter. The instance is the more convincing because 
Miss B. also possesses the faculty, allied to that of 
"crystal vision," 1 by which with special effort she 
can penetrate into the regions removed from con- 
scious recall and see as a projected vision what her 
conscious memory does not reach. By such a pro- 
cess she was astonished to see in the glass globe 
herself walking along Washington Street, putting 
the letter in her pocket, and tearing into frag- 
ments pieces of green paper. The same subcon- 
scious relation may obtain between her sleeping 
and her waking self ; for it appeared that during 
the night following this disclosure, Miss B. arose 
and hid the rest of her money to prevent similar 
disaster. She came to Dr. Prince complaining that 
she could not find her funds ; under the influence 
of the hypnotic suggestion in the form of a pro- 
jected vision, she saw herself reenacting the som- 
nambulistic adventure : the going to the bureau- 
drawer, taking out the money, placing it on the 
table under the cloth, and then covering it with 
two books. Of all these details Sally was equally 
able to give an account. 

The close parallelism between the relation thus 
convincingly determined and that which exists 
between a normally conscious and a normally sub- 
conscious action affords an almost ideal demon- 

1 In these visions, induced by a process which Miss B. called 
" fixing her mind," facts become known (either to B I or to B IV) 
which the active personality cannot by a voluntary effort recall. In 
this respect it is similar in status to an hallucination : the latter 
spontaneously breaks through from a submerged to the superficial 
area ; the former depends upon inducing a condition in which such 
permeability is deliberately favored. 



3G6 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

stration that what here is abnormally developed 
is but the exaggerated elaboration of possibilities 
inherent in every human mind. By similar reve- 
lations it is discovered that Miss B. had arisen at 
night and had climbed to the window-sill, in the 
deep embrasure of a mansard roof, and from this 
perilous position (which caused intense dizziness 
as she revived the scene by " crystal gazing ") she 
threw an inkstand into the street below. Sally 
was able to explain that Miss B., who was prob- 
ably at the time in a semi-delirious condition, was 
imagining that she was walking on the seashore, 
pushing her toes into the carpet as though it were 
sand. The inkstand was a pebble which she had 
picked up, and the window-sill a rock which she 
had climbed in order to toss the stone out into 
the sea. 

It is in accord with the majority of these hys- 
terical transformations that the sensibilities in one 
state show a deviation by way of loss or restriction 
from those of another. Sally is affected with a 
peculiar anaesthesia, that renders her insensible to 
pressure or pricking or burns, and unable to recog- 
nize by the muscular feeling the position in which 
her arm may have been put. As soon, however, as 
she is allowed to see what is thus being done, the 
tactile feelings are reinstated in her consciousness. 
If a bunch of keys is placed in her hands, she does 
not recognize what she holds ; but if they are 
jingled, she recognizes the sound and at the same 
time feels the shape of the keys. It is thus a psy- 
chological exclusion of consciousness of sensations 
which to another phase of consciousness would be 
wholly present. Sally is vigorous and free from 
disease, because she is insensitive to the fatigue 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 367 

and other organic sensations that Miss B. so 
acutely feels. The most remarkable illustration 
of this contraction of the field of sensation is the 
following: The Miss B. of this incident is the 
individual known as B IV, the personality that 
reappeared after six years' sleep. While carelessly 
fingering a chain upon which some rings were 
strung, the chain broke and some of the rings 
were lost. Now the other Miss B. (B I) in her 
uninformed relation to the incident became con- 
vinced that all the rings were gone, although Sally, 
who was well aware of the whole procedure, tried 
to persuade her otherwise. " ' The other two rings 
are not lost,' said Sally, 'but I can't make her 
see them. I have put them on her finger, but she 
won't see them, Dr. Prince ; and I have taken her 
hand and made her take hold of the rings, but she 
won't feel them. They are round her neck now 
on a ribbon. I have made her take the rings in 
her fingers while she is here and I am gone, and 
I have put them on her finger ; but it is no use, 
she won't see them.' " When Dr. Prince awakened 
her as B I, he asked her to loosen her collar, and 
showed her the two rings tied on a ribbon about 
her neck, but though he passed her fingers over 
them and clicked the two rings together, and held 
them before her eyes, she was unable to become 
aware of their existence. He pulled the ribbon 
hard enough to jerk her head to one side ; though 
she felt the movement, she regarded the method 
by which it was accomplished as a mystery. This 
negative hallucination differs from others that 
could readily be induced by suggestion only in the 
fact of its spontaneous origin in a prejudiced con- 
viction. The will to see for this particular range 



368 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

of objects was in abeyance. Upon the same plane 
is the consoling action of Sally upon an extremely 
exciting occasion, when Miss B. had an halluci- 
nation in which she saw an announcement of the 
death of a relative of Dr. Prince which she took 
to be that of the doctor himself. Sally, becoming 
alarmed at her condition, scribbled a note for her 
other self in these words : "Are you mad? Dr. 
Prince is as much alive as you are. It is his father 
who is dead." 

For the most part, Sally's attitude was that of 
intense antagonism towards the other personalities, 
decidedly towards B I, whom she considered as 
especially created as a victim for her spleen, but 
with less of glee and with more of fear in regard 
to B IV, whose thoughts she did not share, and 
whom she presently found was a serious force to be 
reckoned with. B IV was equally vindictive against 
Sally ; and as the latter was preparing an auto- 
biography for Dr. Prince's use, B IV retaliated 
by destroying this document, which action may be 
interpreted as a resentment on the part of the 
better organized self that so crude and contradic- 
tory a phase of her personality should be allowed 
this independent expression. Between the two 
there were endless bickerings, in which Sally was 
obliged to write her derogatory opinions, while 
B IV could communicate hers by speaking aloud. 
It is difficult to realize the antagonisms of this 
divided household. " There were times when IV 
and Sally would enter into systematic campaigns 
of hostilities, each determined to down the other. 
Then IV would gird on her armor, and set forth 
resolute, uncompromising, with blood in her eye, 
determined to suppress Sally for good and all. 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 369 

She would do her best to destroy everything 
that her enemy wrote — many a letter to me was 
destroyed — and to undo everything done. What- 
ever she discovered Sally was doing, she would 
reverse. If, for example, she found herself on 
the way to my house, she would turn about and 
retrace her steps, or at least would try to do so, 
for Sally, in her role as a subconsciousness, would 
at once make a dive for the muscular steering- 
gear, there would be a temporary struggle with 
arms and legs, a sort of aboulia, and then it usu- 
ally happened that Sally, victorious, would reverse 
the machinery and head her again for her desti- 
nation. At night, too, Sally would have another 
turn. As fast as IV would get into bed, Sally, 
coming herself, would get up, and then, chang- 
ing herself back to IV, the latter would find her- 
self to her disgust out of bed again. And so it 
went on all night ; and if IV got off without the 
bed and furniture being turned upside down, she 
was lucky." It was the same tale in regard to 
all the details of the daily routine. If one of the 
personalities woke up after the morning bath, 
another bath had to be taken to satisfy the new 
arrival. Dressing was an equally uncertain matter, 
as the apparel that pleased the one was never worn 
by the other, while it was quite possible that Sally 
had interfered and had hidden essential articles 
that neither of the other personalities could find. 
" One night Sally, to make IV miserable, piled all 
the furniture, everything movable in the room, 
upon the bed and then changed herself to IV. 
But IV foiled her. Instead of putting the room 
to rights as Sally imagined she would be obliged 
to do in order to go to bed, she rolled herself in 



370 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

her steamer rug and slept on the floor. A huge 
joke on Sally, IV thought, but it was really on 
Miss Beauchamp ; for, instead of waking up in 
the morning as IV, she woke as Miss Beauchamp, 
to whose lot it fell to be the drudge and put all 
the furniture back in place." * Even more em- 
barrassing were the social complications, for Sally 
was sufficient of a personality to make friends 
on her own account, which friends often proved 
to be quite distasteful to Miss B, who likewise 
remained unaware of the previous meetings that 
had engendered the friendly relation. It is indeed 
remarkable that so many of these friends failed to 
suspect the true state of affairs, and were content 
to consider Miss B. as a peculiar and somewhat 
moody individual. Yet this impression could not 
have been conveyed had not the several selves a 
sufficient concern for their mutual welfare to min- 
imize the incongruities that inevitably arose from 
the conflicting personalities. 

In regard to the occasions that induce the shift- 
ing from one personality to another, it may be 
said that they are themselves quite various, and 
depend upon the type of instability that prevails 
at any given moment. When specially susceptible, 

1 It is hardly possible to set forth in this synopsis the differen- 
tia of traits that separate the personality of B I and B IV. Dr. 
Prince has made an exhaustive analysis of these differences that 
affect the sphere of personal tastes in food, dress, occupations ; of 
moral and mental habits, likes, aversions, facilities, accomplish- 
ments ; of modes of thought, pursuit of ideals, control of conduct, 
and the several constituents of character. His analysis covers six 
pages, and enumerates some sixty points of contrast. 



TEE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 371 

the changes may come many times within the day 
and even within the hour ; and under a favorable 
mental barometer, the several states may be evoked 
by appropriate suggestions. The more critical 
transformations seem trance-like in their onset; 
and their occasions may be furnished by that 
underlying similarity of mood reenforced by a 
sensory excitation, that probably serves in many 
normal instances to lead a drifting mind in its 
wayward progress. 

An apposite instance is the following : The 
clock was striking- nine as Miss B. was lost in what 
seems to have been a trance-like abstraction, for 
it was half-past nine when she again came to her- 
self. The intervening revery was concerned with 
a girl friend, and also with the incident in her 
personal life that was intimately connected with 
her present difficulties. It appeared that originally 
while in church and while the organ was playing 
Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, this friend leaned 
over and told her a bit of news that decidedly 
shocked her. At this impressionable moment she 
also smelled the odor of the incense and heard and 
felt the wind blowing through the open window. 
Anything that recalls this girl friend, or the scene 
in the church, or the odor of incense, or the blowing 
of the wind on her face may in an impression- 
able moment send her back to this trance-state. 
On the present occasion it was only necessary 
to question Miss B. while hypnotized, to deter- 
mine that at the moment of entering this trance, 
she was brushing her hair at the open window, 
when the feeling of the air recalled the original 



372 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

scene with all its sequences. Naturally, Sally could 
corroborate the account, and described in her 
contemptuous manner that Miss B. just dropped 
back and looked like a fool during her medita- 
tion. This emotional basis for an association is 
a significant factor ; it appears in the frequent 
observations that though the mental content of 
one personality remains unknown to that which 
immediately succeeds it, yet the mood of the 
one, especially when depressed, may persist in a 
vague, unmotived manner, so that the latter per- 
son merely feels sad or irritable without being able 
to supply a reason for her dejection or spleen. 

The nearest approach to the simultaneous ap- 
pearance of the masquerading personalities — like 
the meeting of each Antipholus with his double 
after endless alternate appearances — is that in 
which B IV was surprised by a peculiar expression 
of her reflection as she saw it in a mirror. The 
"thing," as she called the appearance, was in- 
deed Sally; and the dialogue that then ensued, in 
which Miss B., excited and inquisitive, tried to 
elicit information of those critical incidents of the 
past which she had lost, and at last succeeded in 
inducing her proxy reflection to answer by scrib- 
bling notes with a pencil, — all this is significant 
of a rapprochement between the factions engaged 
in civil strife, and of increasing possibilities of 
reconstruction. 

It has thus been set forth with comprehensive 
illustrative detail that the life-history of a dissoci- 
ated mind exhibits in profusion the same compara- 
ble types of relation between one phase and another 



THE GENESIS OF ALTERED PERSONALITY 373 

of its multiple consciousness as obtain in the inter- 
course between the conscious and subconscious 
allotments of thought and action in normal as well 
as in differently constituted abnormal states. All 
this nicely supports the directive principle that al- 
tered personality develops upon a complex synthesis 
of peculiarly estranged, yet in their segregation 
functionally organized states. The principle like- 
wise enforces the generalization that all person- 
ality — the normal, unified, as well as the abnormal, 
dissociated type — is in a sense an acquisition and 
an achievement. The outcome is no more inevit- 
able than is any other aspect of the mental consti- 
tution that participates in the organic evolution 
to which individually and socially our lives are 
subject. Nature and nurture — inheritance and 
experience — bring their measure of influence to 
bear in mutual interplay as cause and effect, to 
fashion us severally as we are, and to alter our 
developing selves in their progress through the 
several ages of man. This emphasis upon the 
intrinsically formative status of the personal issues 
of the mental character pervades the scheme of 
interpretation by which a consistent account of 
these personal fields of abnormal psychology is 
to be rendered. 



VI 

DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 

The vicissitudes of the maturing changes of a 
personal self are likely to develop the most signi- 
ficant as well as the most perplexing varieties of 
disordered personality. The conception resulting 
from an analysis of the mental abnormalities thus 
conditioned needs to be completed by a study of 
allied forms of impairment of different origin and 
status. Anomalies of evolution find their comple- 
ment in accentuated decay, in accidental arrest, 
and — most instructively for the interests of the 
subconscious — in the temporary disqualification 
of function sequent to violent brain disturbance. 
Personality may be marred in the making; it 
may also fail to weather the storms of life un- 
scathed, and come to port at almost any stage of 
its journeyings to repair its damages, if may be, or 
to continue its career in less enterprising service. 
While instances of altered personality are inev- 
itably too individual in their plot to be readily 
comparable, they become more so if we consider 
them in groups with reference to the participation 
in their nature, of the developmental and the ar- 
restive factors. In the first group as already con- 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 375 

sidered, disordered personality becomes an expres- 
sion of an abnormal psychic evolution of the self. 
It is a developmental defect through which the 
normal issue of a consistent individuality fails in 
some measure and in some aspects to be achieved ; 
and such failure finds a favoring condition in the 
normal but profound changes of adolescence, and 
is grafted most propitiously upon the instability 
of the hysterical temperament. In the second 
group, the element of a violent psychic shock, the 
uprooting of the personal foundations, becomes 
determinative ; and we have a reduction in rank 
as well as a contraction of the field of mental 
enterprise. As soon, however, as we apply this 
distinction to the setting of actual cases, we appre- 
ciate that many are likely to occupy a transitional 
status ; and that the two factors may participate 
jointly in the origin and the further development 
of the abnormal career. It has already been indi- 
cated that in irregularities of maturing genesis 
there are apt to be moments of mental shock 
through which the cleft of personality was origi- 
nally brought into being, and which again, as they 
were recalled by the organic association, reinstated 
the disintegrating procedure. Furthermore, the 
very liability to respond with extreme and morbid 
intensity — and in these instances to lose the self- 
orientation — through exposure to such discon- 
certing assaults upon the personal emotions and 



376 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

even to slighter disturbances, is a typical trait of 
hysteria ; while the lessened susceptibility to such 
accident marks the path of recovery from the 
mental frailty. On the other hand, it will appear 
that cases of curtailment of function sufficiently 
comprehensive to rank as alterations of personality 
also exhibit many of the characteristic impairments 
of dissociated-mindedness. With permissible neg- 
lect of their diversity, the two differently condi- 
tioned and differently developing types of insta- 
bility may be brought under a unified scheme of 
interpretation ; and both are naturally regarded as 
expressive of unknown and yet specific impairment 
of correlated functions. It will be desirable to 
consider at this juncture the cases of transitional 
status in which both motives are present, though 
not equally effective ; and in which appear states 
of comparable scope and stability, yet of contrasted 
character and sundered relations, presenting fluc- 
tuations between the two in fairly extensive as 
well as intensive waves of mental oscillation. 

The hysterical vicissitudes might readily fur- 
nish occasion for such comprehensive periodicity. 
The irritability might be cumulative in nature, 
awaiting only a moderately disturbing moment 
to turn the balance from one division of the per- 
sonal synthesis to the other ; or again, any vio- 
lent convulsion migiit act with the suddenness of 
a paralytic stroke to overturn the impaired equili- 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 377 

brium. The accidents of maturing instability, 
equally with a single or recurrent shock to a nor- 
mal or to an especially vulnerable organization, 
might thus be responsible for a fairly complete 
disqualification of a self. The nature of the mental 
disabilities that such dissociative shock may entail 
will be best appreciated from a survey of a group 
of instances. In selecting these " transitional " 
illustrations, it is accordingly necessary at once to 
regard their bearing upon their mode of origin, 1 
upon the type of alteration or alternation of per- 
sonality that ensues, and in turn upon the man- 
ner of disqualified function that they engender. 

An apposite case in several respects is the fre- 
quently cited one of Felida X., dating back to 
1858. As an adolescent she experienced much ill 
health, and displayed complex hysterical symptoms. 
She developed a liability to lapse into a condition 
markedly contrasted with her usual state. From 
girlhood up she was occupied as a seamstress ; and 
it frequently occurred, when thus engaged, that 
the change of state came upon her. A sudden 
pain in the temple was followed by the falling for- 
ward of her head, and a lapse into a deep sleep, — 
originally occupying some minutes, but in later 
years only a few seconds, — from which she came 

1 It is unfortunately true that the descriptions of many in- 
stances instructive in other respects, afford no sufficient insight 
into the genesis of the disorder. Yet it seems worth while to 
include such cases for the illumination they afford of specific 
relations pertinent to the general point of view. 



378 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

to as a different person. Her former depression 
and weakness had given way to gayety of manner 
and action. Her voice was now strong as she sang 
merrily at her work ; she no longer complained 
of troublesome symptoms, walked about briskly, 
attended to her household duties, visited with the 
neighbors 7 and presented the appearance of a 
healthy young woman. By a similar and equally 
sudden change the old condition of depressed 
invalidism returned. Such transformation did 
not interfere with the continuance of her routine 
occupations, though it left her without knowl- 
edge of what might have happened in the other 
state. The susceptibility to such alternations 
varied with the general health, and for a period 
of three years remained absent. The gay, active 
periods gradually lengthened ; and after seven- 
teen years of such fluctuations, these constituted 
her almost permanent condition. 

The exclusion from the memory of what was, 
at the time, the dominant state, of the personal 
doings of the altered condition, may be thus illus- 
trated : On one occasion, while in a carriage re- 
turning from a funeral, the change of state came 
on ; she was naturally at a loss to know why she 
was in a carriage with companions dressed in 
mourning, or who might be the person whose 
obsequies she had attended. She was sufficiently 
accustomed to such situations to take the matter 
calmly, and to introduce leading questions from 
which, by shrewd inference, she could piece to- 
gether the state of affairs without exposing her 
mental idiosyncrasy. She provided against any 
interference with her work from such interrup- 
tions by writing down instructions concerning 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 379 

her sewing commissions, by means of which the 
ensuing personality would be informed of what 
had been planned and what remained to be 
done. 

While Felida was accustomed to regard what- 
ever state was upon her as the normal, and spoke 
of the complementary period as the " other," the 
evidence is fairly clear that the states were not of 
equal scope or status. During the gay, altered 
period the memory persisted not only of what was 
done in like preceding periods, but as well of the 
whole of her life ; while the dejected conditions 
were wholly deprived of any knowledge of what 
occurred in the gay intervals. It is also clear 
that the routine facilities and the acquisitions of 
her trade as well as of her mode of life were com- 
mon property of the two. The so-called secondary 
or derivative state may thus be regarded as one 
in which there is a release of the hysterical obses- 
sions of the (at first) dominant personality. Dur- 
ing such release, the consciousness is superior in 
content by reason of its inclusion of the per- 
sonal memories of the other state ; and it is this 
more comprehensive condition that, at first ap- 
pearing as an interruption or lapse, eventually 
becomes permanently established, though with 
sporadic reversions to the hysterical state of mor- 
bid dejection. The shifting status of the two 
personalities requires for its expression fairly com- 
plex formulae, in which the terms have variable 
values. There is likewise evidence of an occasional 
condition — the transitional sleep may be one of 
these — in which the two personalities stand in 
conjunction. The tentative interpretation that the 
records permit, enrolls the instance as one of al- 



380 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ternation of mental states contrasted emotionally, 
with exclusion (though not reciprocal) of per- 
sonal memories, motives, and actions, and with 
gradual dominance of the interrupted periods 
through their superior and more stable synthesis. 
A comparable instance is that of Mary Reynolds. 
The first transition from a normal to an abnor- 
mal condition seems to have occurred during an 
unusually prolonged sleep. From this she awoke 
as a complete stranger to her family and to her 
surroundings. Her entire mental acquisitions had 
apparently disappeared. Yet along with an infan- 
tile lack of acquaintance with the world of things, 
she retained a mature capacity for entering into 
the outdoor life of her environment, then the 
American frontier. Her reeducation had to be 
undertaken from the beginning : reading, writing, 
the names of the commonest objects, what they 
were for and how they were used, who were the 
members of the family and what were their rela- 
tions to her, and all the familiar household occu- 
pations of the daily routine. Her disposition had 
equally changed from depression to good cheer, 
and from a retiring to a very sociable nature. In 
this second state, her prevailing passion was to 
ride or walk through the trackless forest, knowing 
no fear of the wild animals there to be met. The 
bears, she insisted, were nothing more than black 
hogs, and on one occasion told of an encounter 
with one of them which she had attacked with 
nothing more than a stick. This altered condition 
continued for five weeks, when again, after a long 
sleep, she awoke as her true self, with the inter- 
vening period entirely forgotten, surprised at the 
changed aspect of nature, with no knowledge of 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 381 

her dangerous rambles in the woods, and with 
complete assumption of her old disposition and of 
her place in the family life. After some weeks 
the altered condition came on, bringing with it a 
memory of the previous similar period, and with 
complete oblivion of her normal life. These alter- 
nations took place at intervals of varying length 
for about fifteen years, and then ceased, leaving 
her permanently in the second state, in which, 
according to the account, she passed as many 
as twenty -five years of her life. She was able to 
occupy a useful position as a school-teacher, and 
seemed to have retained in later years only a dim 
recollection of her early abnormalities. The im- 
perfect record of this instance prevents anything 
more than a general interpretation. It may un- 
questionably be classified as belonging to the type 
of alternating personality with gradual recedence 
of the one state in favor of the other, but with no 
clear determination of the precise relations between 
the two. 1 

Alternating conditions of similar status occur 
more frequently as episodes in the history of 
mentally abnormal individuals than as the central 
feature of the altered personality. There is the 
case of Emile X., who exhibited such obliterating 
transformations along with other stigmata of a 
nervously unstable system. The type of his in- 
firmity may be thus illustrated : On September 
23, 1888, he had a quarrel with his father, the 
agitation acting as a stimulus to induce the altered 

1 The imperfections of this narrative become intelligible when 
it is understood that the case (dating from 1811) has been largely 
reported indirectly, the final record being contributed by the ex- 
pert hand of Dr. Weir Mitchell. 



382 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

state. He came to himself again, three weeks 
later, in a distant village, and knew nothing of 
his actions in the interval. Later investigation 
proved that during this time he had paid a visit 
to his uncle (at whose home he had destroyed 
objects and manuscripts of value), had contracted 
a debt of five hundred francs, and had been tried 
before a court and found guilty of larceny. Or 
again : On the 11th of May, 1889, he breakfasted 
at a restaurant in Paris, and two days later found 
himself at Troyes with the interval a complete 
blank, and with the immediate discovery that he 
had lost his overcoat, in which was his pocket- 
book containing 226 francs. Interesting in this 
case is the fact that when hypnosis was induced, 
the state that ensued was sufficiently allied to the 
normal to reproduce the dissociated memories. 
This phase of his personality was able to give a 
detailed account of the events after the breakfast 
at Paris until his awakening at Troyes : the ride 
in the cab to the depot, the journey to Troyes, 
the hotel in which he lodged, and the number of 
the room he occupied ; his subsequent call upon 
a merchant of the town, his breakfast with the 
same the next morning, his approaching indispo- 
sition and appeal to a policeman, who took him to 
the central bureau and then to the hospital where 
he came to himself. In pursuance of his hypnotic 
revelation, a note was addressed to the hotel at 
Troyes that resulted in the return of his overcoat 
with the money intact. Of all this his conscious 
memory could give no account whatever. 

An instructive variation of this type of disor- 
der is presented by the case of Louis V., a lad 
of seventeen, of neuropathic heredity, and whose 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 383 

malady was diagnosed as hysterical epilepsy. A 
vagrant and a thief, he was sent to a reformatory, 
where he was put to work in the fields. While 
thus occupied he was badly frightened, though 
not hurt, by a snake which he grasped among a 
bundle of twigs. He fell into repeated attacks, in 
which his legs became paralyzed; and on this ac- 
count he was transferred to an asylum. There he 
was reported as an amiable, straightforward lad, 
appreciative of the care bestowed upon him. He 
told of his thefts and his mode of life, of which 
he seemed much ashamed, and resolved to seek an 
honest living in the future. He was put to work 
in the tailor shop, and in two months' time learned 
to sew fairly well. Then came a further attack, 
lasting fifty hours, followed by a sleep, from 
which he awoke in his old personality. He be- 
lieved himself to be at the reformatory, demanded 
his clothes, and managed to dress himself and to 
walk with some difficulty, though the paralysis 
had disappeared. He knew nothing of his sur- 
roundings, his recollection going back to the 
moment of being badly frightened by a snake. 
He did not recognize the tailor shop in which he 
had worked, handled a needle as a novice, and 
scoffed at the notion that the work upon which 
his altered self had been engaged had been done 
by him. With this change the old character 
returned ; he was rude, selfish, gluttonous, and 
inclined to theft. He succeeded in stealing 60 
francs and in making his escape, but was caught 
and brought back after a violent struggle. 

While these several transitions repeatedly oc- 
curred, it appears from the later history of the 
case that the systems of dissociation themselves 



384 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

varied with the progress of the malady. As many 
as six states are described, each of which seems 
to revive a different period of his life history, to 
exhibit different groupings of personal traits, and 
a distinctive type of nervous impairment. When 
the right side of his body is afflicted with par- 
tial anaesthesia and partial paralysis, his charac- 
ter is mainly that of the boorish vagrant, though 
his memories may be those of any one of sev- 
eral stages of his career during which what may 
be regarded as his normal state persisted ; when 
the above symptoms are transferred to his left 
side, he becomes twenty-one years of age, is cor- 
rect in speech and bearing, and has forgotten 
many of the periods of his checkered life ; when 
all the nervous symptoms disappear, he may be- 
come either a boy of fourteen and recall for the 
most part the experiences of his boyhood, or a 
young man of twenty-two, at the period of his 
entry into the Marine Corps, and displaying 
speech and behavior proper to that period, yet 
without knowledge of the incidents of the re- 
formatory and the asylum, and consequently with 
no acquaintance with the tailoring trade there 
acquired. Under hypnotic suggestion, one or an- 
other of these partial personalities may be aroused ; 
and with the personality come also the defects of 
movement and sensation (or their absence) that 
characterized the actual onset of that state. Dis- 
regarding the more peculiar features of the case, 
the instability and recurrence of variant states are 
clearly exhibited, and the special connection of 
each with the impairments of a nervous system, 
functionally disorganized in a specific direction, 
is well demonstrated. 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 385 

While we can but uncertainly conjecture what 
may be the intrinsic mode of operation of the 
shock, physical or mental, that entails the pecul- 
iar disintegration of the most highly elaborated 
brain-functions of which the restriction of person- 
ality is the outer expression, we know that such 
accidents do at times have this consequence. It 
would seem plausible to suppose that such inju- 
ries, like the sudden torrents that inundate a val- 
ley, would bring ruin and destruction in their 
path ; and we should have only the incoherence 
and the imbecility of a wrecked intelligence to 
contemplate. But occasionally the mental freshet 
seems merely to loosen the structure from its 
original foundations, to whirl it downstream with 
but slight damage, and to leave it temporarily 
anchored in some seemingly chance situation, to 
find there a new service in an alien land. We 
are then tempted to suspect some unobserved lia- 
bility to mental dissociation, and to regard such 
disposition as partly responsible for the peculiar 
issue. We suspect this the more readily, when 
the sudden alteration comes without physical in- 
jury, seemingly as the result of some deep inter- 
nal eruption of which, even in the calm after the 
passing storm, the victim can give no satisfac- 
tory account. At times corroborative evidence of 
such psychic frailty may be gathered; but the 
cases are equally common in which the change of 



386 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

personality must be accepted without explanation, 
— a destructive bolt from a clear sky. 

To this class, and embodying a possible tend- 
ency towards nervous instability, belongs the case 
of the Rev. Ansel Bourne, recounted by Professor 
James. Mr. Bourne, an itinerant preacher, was 
described as a firm, self-reliant, upright man. On 
January 17, 1887, he drew $558 from a bank in 
Providence, R. I., with which to pay for a pur- 
chase of land ; he actually paid certain bills and 
entered a Pawtucket horse-car; and from there 
on his memory ceases. He was advertised as lost ; 
and the police sought in vain to locate him. " On 
the morning of March 14th, however, at Norris- 
town, Pennsylvania, a man calling himself A. J. 
Brown, who had rented a small shop six weeks 
previously, stocked it with stationery, confection- 
ery, fruit and small articles, and carried on his 
quiet trade without seeming to any one unnat- 
ural or eccentric, woke up in a fright and called 
in the people of the house to tell him where he 
was." He called himself Ansel Bourne, went 
back at once to the transactions at Providence as 
the last event he could recall, and declined to 
believe that two months had elapsed since his 
coming to Norristown. This change of personal- 
ity never recurred ; and he continued his normal 
life with no intimate knowledge of his wayward 
adventure. During the " Brown " period, the 
personality in charge was sufficiently self-reliant 
to conduct the small business, to go to Phila- 
delphia to replenish the stock, to prepare the 
meals and attend to the housekeeping, to go to 
church regularly, and to live a well-ordered but 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 387 

extremely simple and retired life. One incident 
only is recorded proving the persistence of the 
" Bourne " memories : on one occasion, at a 
prayer-meeting, he made an address in which he 
related events that he had witnessed as Mr. 
Bourne. It was three years later that the attempt 
was made to arouse the " Brown " memory during 
hypnosis. When hypnotized, he at once became 
Mr. Brown, assumed the facial expression which 
he then had worn, said he had never heard of 
Ansel Bourne, did not recognize Mrs. Bourne, 
and was able to recount details of his life as a 
shopkeeper. 

What is notable in this incident is not only its 
single occurrence, but also that the personality 
suddenly called into being is only a limited, more 
simply functioning individual than the normal ; 
likewise that the chasm between the two is, and 
remains, quite pronounced. The objective details 
— the wandering from home and the uncongenial 
life of the shop — cannot be further accounted 
for ; all that can be said psychologically is that 
the disqualified personality becomes, in Professor 
James's phrase, " nothing but a rather shrunken, 
dejected, and amnesic extract of Mr. Bourne him- 
self." 

Somewhat similar is the case of Mr. S. recorded 
by Dr. Dana. Here the occasioning shock acted 
directly upon the nervous centres, being due to 
the escape of gas in the room during the night. 
Mr. S. was found completely unconscious, and 
with difficulty was restored to life. He remained 
delirious and incoherent for about a week, and 
was then free from any signs of mania ; but his 
personality had altered and much of his memory 



388 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

acquisitions were lost. His conversation indicated 
that he did not know who and where he was, and 
that the knowledge of his past life was meagre. 
His vocabulary was limited ; he could understand 
only the simplest language, and seemed ignorant 
of the names and uses of common things ; yet 
his habits and impulses served him well, and he 
was able to conduct himself properly and neatly 
in the affairs of the toilet or at the table. Though 
he could not read or write, he acquired knowledge 
very quickly, and showed equal facility in learn- 
ing to play billiards, or to carve in wood, or to 
play the banjo. He was described as a person 
with an active brain set down in a new world, 
with everything to learn. He was aware that he 
was in a strange condition and was anxious to be 
himself. Though he recognized no one, not even 
his fiancee, he showed great fondness for her 
company ; and it was consequent to an interview 
with her, just three months later, that he experi- 
enced a peculiar prickling and numb sensation in 
his head, fell asleep, and woke up perfectly nor- 
mal, but with the intervening period an absolute 
blank. He at once resumed his old life, and has 
continued perfectly well ever since. 

A resume of still another instance will illus- 
trate the several points of community as well as 
of diversity. The individual in question seems 
to have been a man of good health, free from 
any apparent nervous disability, a tinsmith by 
trade, living in Philadelphia. On a Sunday in 
November he had been enjoying the day with his 
family, when he went indoors, put on his busi- 
ness clothes, said he was going out for a short 
walk, and disappeared. All attempts to find him 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 389 

proved unsuccessful ; and his wife and family- 
sold the property and moved to Chicago. Two 
years later, in one of the Southern States, a man 
working with his companions pressed his hand 
to his head in a bewildered way, shouting : " My 
God ! where am I ? How did I come here ? This 
is n't my shop. Where am I ? What does it 
mean ? " During all this time he had earned his 
living as a tinner, had assumed another name, 
and had passed as a perfectly normal man. His 
memory went back at once to that fateful Sun- 
day. He found and rejoined his family, and was 
resigned to regard the episode as a mysterious 
gap in his life's continuity. 

What these instances mainly disclose is the pos- 
sibility of violent eruptions that sever the conti- 
nuity of an apparently well-organized mental life, 
that close the book of personal experience on one 
page and open it again with seeming caprice upon 
an altered tale, amid other scenes, with other mo- 
tives and with transformed characters. Yet indi- 
viduals thus wandering literally in actual distance, 
and psychologically in mental disposition, from the 
native heath, manifestly take with them some selec- 
tive equipment of their acquisitions and training. 
The tinsmith remains a tinsmith ; and though the 
itinerant preacher becomes a shopkeeper, doubt- 
less in the latter capacity he displays the acquired 
facilities of his less professional accomplishments. 
It seems far more rational to regard the mental 



390 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

rift as erupting no new-born capacities, but rather 
as throwing the individual back upon the inti- 
mate, ingrained, even though suppressed or not 
consciously fostered resources of his experienced 
self. If the shock is more fundamentally upset- 
ting, one might expect that the impairment of 
the highest coordinating, self-orienting functions 
would reduce a being with full and free initia- 
tive of plan and action to a state of more or less 
complex automatism. The extent to which this 
element, so conspicuous in the various phases of 
somnambulism, is present in the dissociation of 
altered personality, is not easy to determine. It is 
clearly not warranted to regard the vagrant per- 
sonalities just instanced as passing the abnormal 
period in a prolonged somnambulism; but it is 
appropriate to indicate that this type of disorder- 
ing of the personal self does entail a more or less 
marked curtailment in scope, and degradation in 
complexity, of the mental powers. The altered 
personality becomes an enfeebled, bereft, disabled 
personality, yet with some decided variability in 
the type of disqualification that prevails. 

There is an instructive case of an altered con- 
dition sequent to brain injury, that sets forth the 
extreme possibilities of the automatism that is the 
expression of a reduced personality. The case is 
that of a soldier who in the Franco-Prussian war re- 
ceived a disabling wound in the head. The injury 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 391 

to the brain induced a temporary paralysis of the 
right leg ; but this was recovered from, and left 
only a recurrent liability to somewhat prolonged 
lapses of a trance-like nature. It may be mentioned 
that this functional trouble did not interfere with 
the earning of his living, at times as a clerk, and 
occasionally as a singer in the Parisian cafes. The 
somnambulistic state into which he fell offered 
a peculiar complex of limitations. His senses 
seemed no longer to serve him except in the direc- 
tion of his automatic concerns. He saw only suf- 
ficiently to avoid obstacles, apparently without 
recognizing their nature. Smell and taste were 
so reduced that he ate and drank quite mechan- 
ically, and did not reject disagreeable food; he 
was deaf to ordinary noises, and could be reached 
only through the sense of touch. Through this 
sense his actions could be suggestively directed 
by the nature of the objects thus introduced to 
his notice. While in this condition, he was pos- 
sessed by the impulse to appropriate any small 
objects with which his hand came in contact, and 
exercised this propensity in thoughtless, mechani- 
cal fashion. In brief, his behavior was that of an 
automaton, progressively inspired by a series of 
simple intentions. 

On one occasion, while walking in his usual 
abstracted manner along a corridor, he came at 
the end of it to a closed door. This he attempted 
to open by various devices, even trying to break 
the lock, then apparently gave it up and turned 
in another direction. At this juncture a bunch of 
keys was placed before his eyes, but he did not 
see them ; they were rattled, but he did not hear 
them ; when placed in his hand, he immediately 



392 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

felt them, tried one after another, found the right 
one, and opened the door. Entering- the adjoining 
room, he went to a table, passed his hands over it, 
came in contact with the knob of a drawer, opened 
it, and here touched a pen. The pen seemed to 
awake the idea of writing, whereupon he took 
paper and ink, found a chair, sat down, and began 
to write a letter. He wrote in his ordinary way, 
and showed the use of the sense of sight ; he kept 
on writing when an obstacle was placed between 
his eyes and the paper, though under these condi- 
tions the writing became illegible. When water 
was substituted for ink, he was puzzled and seemed 
unable to proceed. It was also possible quickly to 
pull away, one by one, the sheets upon which he 
was writing, so that at the end he had spread a 
few sentences over parts of five different sheets of 
paper. After signing his name on the last sheet, 
and apparently oblivious of the disappearance of 
the others, he went through the movements of 
reading over again what he had written, putting 
in commas and crossings and letters on the now 
blank page, to correspond with the desired positions 
of these corrections on the sheets upon which the 
words had been written. 

Or, again, while wandering in the garden, he 
took out his cigarette case, opened it, found paper 
and tobacco, and skillfully rolled a cigarette. He 
similarly found his matches, lit the cigarette, 
stamped out the match, and smoked as he walked. 
When he wished a second cigarette, his attend- 
ant took away the tobacco-pouch, whereupon he 
searched in all his pockets, and seemed surprised 
not to find it ; yet he did not see it when it was 
held before him, and it had again to be placed in 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 393 

his hand. When he struck a second match, it was 
blown out by the attendant and another burning 
match offered him ; but the other match he did 
not see, even when it singed his eyelashes. In 
similar automatic mimicry he could be induced to 
go through some of his performances as a singer 
in the cafes or as a soldier in the army. With 
the same suddenness with which this state ensued, 
it passed off and left him perfectly normal with 
full command of his faculties. In this instance 
we have a normally functioning personality in- 
terrupted by recurrent phases of a decidedly 
handicapped personality, capable only of a lim- 
ited machine-like life, similar to that observable 
in the brief moments of ordinary somnambulism. 

In the instance just cited, the recurrent states 
of automatism may be regarded as a by-product 
of functional brain impairment. It seems consis- 
tent with our knowledge of nervous functions to 
find such a degradation in initiative and scope of 
mental behavior as a possible sequence of disorder 
in the finer quality of the brain's reactions. The 
loss of the more consciously and deliberately ac- 
quired achievements, along with the retention of 
ingrained habits and automatic responses, presents 
a line of cleavage that frequently enters into the 
formation of altered personality. We should in- 
deed be inclined to rate the seriousness of such a 
functional loss by the degree to which the field of 
automatic faculties was invaded. Most instructive 
in this respect, though presenting a complex status 



394 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

in regard to the temporary mental limitations that 
ensued, is the instance which may properly be re- 
served to close the series. 

The subject of the case is the Rev. Mr. Hanna. 1 
The sudden change of his mental condition came 
upon him in full health, as the result of an acci- 
dent while driving on the evening of April 15, 
1887. After a period of unconsciousness during 
which he was carried indoors and put to bed, he 
opened his eyes with a dazed, inquiring expression. 
Owing to a misunderstanding of his condition, the 
attendants bound Mr. Hanna, to which proceed- 
ing he made vigorous objection. In this struggle 
under an exciting emotion he made good use of 
his strength and gave evidence of a considerable 

1 The record will be found in the volume by Dr. Sidis and Dr. 
Goodhart, cited below. It is notable not only by reason of the 
careful investigation that was expended upon it, but as well for 
the success with which the pursuit of the psychological method of 
diagnosis and treatment led to a reintegration of the person- 
ality. The record gains in value through the cooperation of the 
patient, whose mental training enabled him to add an introspec- 
tive account, written after complete recovery, recording his own 
analysis of his mental states during the disintegrated period. 
Abridged accounts of the several cases cited may be found as 
follows : in Binet : Alterations of Personality, the case of Felida 
X. (pages 6-20) ; of Louis V. (pages 25-32) ; of Emil X. (pages 
32-36); and of Mesnet's soldier (pages 42-64). In Sidis and 
Goodhart : Multiple Personality, the case of Mr. Hanna (pages 
83-229) ; of Mesnet's soldier (pages 310-315) ; the case of Mr. 
S. (pages 368-373); of the tinsmith (pages 365-368); and of 
Louis V. (pages 427-434). In James's Psychology, the case of 
Mary Reynolds (vol. i, pages 381-384); and of Ansel Bourne 
(pages 391-393). Additional cases and original sources may be 
found in these references. 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 395 

measure of motor control. As soon as a careful 
investigation of his condition was possible, it was 
determined that he had apparently lost the com- 
plete range of his knowledge and acquisitions, not 
only of his acquaintance with the simplest objects, 
but even with the meaning of the elementary or- 
ganic sensations of his own body. His condition 
was described as akin to that of a new-born infant ; 
and the stages of his relearning offered close ana- 
logies to the progress of early infancy. Though 
suffering from hunger, he was unable to interpret 
the sensation or to appreciate the method whereby 
to satisfy it. Food had to be forced into his 
mouth, and only when reflexly swallowed, did he 
appreciate its purpose. His eyes had to learn the 
quality of size, and distance, and color. His ears 
were affected by sounds which he referred to the 
vocal apparatus of the speaker, and which he pro- 
ceeded to imitate, but of the existence of speech, 
or of its meaning, he was entirely ignorant. He 
seemed equally to have to discover the power which 
he exercised over his own muscles, so as to dis- 
tinguish between his own movements and those 
of other persons. Naturally, his interpretations 
were crude and often erroneous. The difference 
between men and women and children, between 
his family and strangers, had all to be learned 
anew. His surroundings were utilized in the 
manner of the simplest object lessons, to teach 
him the rudimentary nature and uses of what 
a one-year-old child has already acquired in con- 
siderable measure. Thus, when looking at a dis- 
tant tree through a window, he attempted to 
grasp the tree and knew nothing of the nature of 
the object that attracted him. He mistook a piece 



396 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

of soap for food and tried to eat it. Upon his 
first sight of a man riding a bicycle, he regarded 
the combined object as a new variety of man. 
With the first learning of words, his mind ac- 
quired the material necessary to its elaboration, 
and developed with such remarkable rapidity as 
to bring complete conviction that the reacquisition 
was proceeding upon the basis of the benumbed 
but not destroyed facilities of his normal self. He 
rarely forgot anything thus reacquired; and in 
a few weeks was able to read and write, though 
slowly and with effort, and to use a considerable 
vocabulary, though with occasional gaps and cir- 
cumlocutions to eke out his enfeebled phraseology. 
In illustration of the reappearance of his nat- 
ural emotional traits, it may be mentioned that 
Mr. Hanna had at one time pursued architectural 
studies, had a decided aesthetic appreciation, and 
was clever with his hands. In the first weeks of 
his recovery, he showed unusual responsiveness to 
the beauties of nature, and a general appreciation 
of matters of taste. He had likewise been fond 
of music, and in his new condition learned the 
banjo with remarkable ease. During the period 
of his reeducation he was gradually brought to a 
state in which he could enter freely into general 
conversation, could discuss his own condition, and 
resume anew the relations with his family and with 
his fiancee. Yet he had no knowledge of his past 
career, which had been a somewhat versatile one, 
including his early college days and his subse- 
quent architectural training, then his change to 
the theological seminary, his active charge of a 
congregation, and his practical interest in his min- 
isterial concerns. The old personality, so far as 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 397 

any conscious awareness thereof was involved, 
had disappeared ; and Mr. Hanna was, during the 
week subsequent to the accident, substantially as 
a wholly uninformed individual, — his mind the 
tabula rasa of the philosophers, — who had come 
into being on the night of April 15. 

The method pursued to restore Mr. Hanna to 
his original condition was to overwhelm him with 
a great mass of impressions, presumably familiar 
to his early life, to bombard his senses with expe- 
riences that might arouse the latent vestiges of 
his buried self, and thus gradually to bring back 
by vigorous subconscious stimulation what his 
conscious effort could not command. It may be 
anticipated that the stages by which this result 
was accomplished proved to be, first, a spontane- 
ous but brief recurrence of the original condition, 
followed by a lapse back to the impaired state ; 
then more frequent and longer maintained rever- 
sions to the normal ; finally, conflict between the 
two states and their fusion. For a time the two 
conditions remained independent, neither know- 
ing aught of the other, and with the subject at 
the mercy of wholly unexpected alternations. By 
special effort and with the assistance of certain 
promptings, the two states were then brought in 
a measure face to face, so that it became proper 
to speak of this newer, more complete condition 
as a period of contest, in which the individual 
was called upon either to choose between the two, 
or, if that might be, to accept both as portions 
of a single life, to fit them together with such 
measure of gap as was inevitable, and thus re- 
conciled, to continue the normal life. 

The first step in this consummation was taken 



398 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

in early June, when Mr. Hanna went with his 
brother and his physicians to New York city. 
His first evening there (June 8) was spent at a 
popular restaurant, amid bright surroundings and 
cheerful talk, all of which bewildered the new 
Mr. Hanna, who naturally had met with no expe- 
riences of this nature. Awakening from a few 
hours of sleep, not easily procured after so excit- 
ing an evening, Mr. Hanna called his brother at 
three in the morning, wanted to know where he 
was, and upon being told that he was in New 
York, persisted in knowing why he was there. 
His brother returned question with question, and 
so ascertained that Mr. Hanna was awakening 
from the period of the drive of April 15. He 
related what he did on that evening up to the 
point of the accident ; he even recalled a humor- 
ous ode that one of the family had written on 
that day. He remembered his college life, but be- 
came impatient of all this questioning, and per- 
sisted in knowing why he was in New York. His 
brother, wishing to light the gas, asked him where 
he had put the matches; but as these had been 
bestowed by the other Mr. Hanna, the present 
Mr. Hanna did not know. The doctors, who at 
this stage entered the room, were naturally stran- 
gers to him ; and he refused to believe that he had 
known them for weeks, thinking the whole affair 
a joke perpetrated by his brother. He evidently 
knew nothing of the intervening weeks, looked 
about the room in the manner of one just enter- 
ing, and examined objects as though encounter- 
ing them for the first time. In the midst of the 
conversation he suddenly exclaimed, " What a 
funny taste in my mouth ; you have been feeding 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 399 

me on tobacco." (He had been induced to smoke 
a cigarette the evening before, a custom that the 
original Mr. Hanna had entirely given up.) He 
said that he felt hazy like Rip Van Winkle, and 
as if recovering from the fall of " last Thursday." 
The state lasted for about three quarters of an 
hour, whereupon Mr. Hanna fell asleep, and awoke 
at nine in the morning, presenting again, to the 
surprise of his physicians, the Mr. Hanna of the 
reacquired state. He knew nothing of the night's 
adventure after his reading at night and his 
placing the matches on the mantel. When the 
name of Rip Van Winkle was used, he did not 
know what it meant, but thought it might be the 
name of a hotel. 

As already indicated, the lapses back to the 
primary condition occurred with greater frequency, 
and their occurrence was continually stimulated by 
the deluge of experiences from the life that was 
presumably familiar to the older self. He had 
to be told sufficient of his doings in the one con- 
dition to enable him to orientate himself with his 
surroundings ; and the two personalities began 
thus to be more and more aware of their own 
alternation. A new condition, which was called 
the " complete " state, at times came on sponta- 
neously, and seemed more like a state of arrest in 
which all functions were in abeyance, and in which 
Mr. Hanna, according to his later confessions, 
was busy with the puzzling perplexities of his 
inner life. The conflict of the two gave rise to a 
painful sense of loss and confusion, underlying 
which was the intense attempt to choose between 
the two personalities, or by effort of the will to 
combine them into one. It was six months after 



400 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the original attack that Mr. Hanna's personal 
stability had been sufficiently restored to enable 
him to write his autobiography, by which the 
essential features of the account were verified. 

A single passage from this interesting docu- 
ment may be cited to show the nature of this 
struggle for a unified life. " In the primary state 
I found myself making thoughtlessly a resolution 
that on again awakening in the secondary state 
I would not be alarmed at the change; but of 
course, at the next change, there was no memory 
of the resolution, and consequently, distress was 
felt. While in the one state, I was informed of 
my experiences in the other, so that I knew in an 
indirect way the state of things. It was thus that 
in each state I came to a determination to assist 
the scientists in effecting a cure. Yet as each 
resolution was not known to the other state, there 
was not the necessary harmony of action. One 
resolution was that while in the primary state an 
effort would be made by me to remain awake at 
all hazards day and night until a continuance in 
that state seemed probable. The other resolution 
made in the secondary state was to cling to the 
facts of that state and that life with a grip of 
steel, yet to allow the passing into what the doc- 
tors call the intermediary state, when they would 
be able to give me the facts of the other life 
while I was holding to the present also." After 
describing the intensity of the effort to remain 
awake while in the primary state and his occa- 
sional lapses to clouded consciousness, he con- 
tinues : " Suddenly there was a glimpse of the 
secondary life, only a glimpse, it is true, yet a 
revelation of infinite wonder as being the first 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 401 

real insight into one state from the other. In- 
stantly the thought came, ' What is the use of 
enduring this severe struggle when invited into 
that attractive life, the secondary state?' This 
statement was not thus carefully formulated, but 
that was the impulse of the moment, the feeling- 
was just to that effect. But saying mentally 
again, ' What is the use? ' there was a letting go, 
and the primary life was again lost." The more 
difficult struggle was to induce in the secondary 
state a revival of the primary. Here a persistent 
plying with questions and an insistence upon the 
facts of the other state was the method pursued. 
" I felt quite vexed at what seemed the obstinacy 
of the doctors, yet was coming more and more to 
feel the force of their statements. Yet even now 
only the first position was gained in the conflict, 
for while both lives were presented to the mind, 
where was the possibility of combining them ? 
And had I not lived and felt each life ? Yet how 
could one person live and feel both lives ? Here 
was a critical point. But the doctors persisted 
they were both my lives, and indeed I knew each 
one was, though it is impossible to make two men 
and make them both into one. But the lives were 
constantly becoming more and more personal, 
until at last, by a deliberate, voluntary act, the 
two were seized, and have both remained for half 
a year to the present date, though for some time 
after the recovery, it was difncult to dovetail 
together the detached portions of each life so as 
to present a continuous history." 

In conformity with our previous analyses, it 
will be well to give evidence of the submerged 
presence during the period of recovery, of the 



402 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

subconscious registry of the primary self. In the 
case of Mr. Hanna, the evidence is particularly 
convincing, because it appears, at least partly, in 
the spontaneity of dream-life. During the weeks 
of his reeducation, Mr. Hanna was able to describe 
two kinds of dreams ; the one weak, difficult to 
recall, while the other, the " clear picture-dreams," 
as he called them, are vivid and detailed with un- 
usual precision. These vivid dreams were really 
recollections of the forgotten life, though Mr. 
Hanna naturally did not recognize them as such. 
In one of these he described the scene as placed 
at a railway station. A man stood there, who, 
by some peculiar knowledge, he knew was named 
Bustler. He was tall, not stout, and had on a black 
coat rounded in front. The man said to Mr. 
Hanna, " I thank you for helping me yesterday," 
— a remark interpreted to refer to his assistance 
at the church service. Then the man Bustler dis- 
appeared, and the dreamer saw a square house with 
the letters n-e-w-b-o-s-t-o-n-j-u-n-c on it. These 
letters, Mr. Hanna, in telling the dream, did not 
pronounce as words, and could attach no meaning 
to them. He also described in his dream a scene 
in which he saw a horse with long ears and a tail 
like a cow (a mule), and^ in the background, pe- 
culiar buildings, and black mounds, — all of which 
were scenes from his early life in the coal district 
in Pennsylvania. There were still other types of 
intrusions from the lost experiences that presented 
themselves at times of deep absorption, and occa- 
sionally by chance association, all of which gave 
evidence that Mr. Hanna occasionally lapsed into 
an intermediate condition, in which some measure 
of intercourse of each condition with the other 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 403 

was momentarily, yet confusedly, possible. Such 
fragmentary enlightenment was in marked con- 
trast with the sudden and complete recall of his 
normal experiences that occurred with the first 
reappearance of the old self during the night of 
June 8. The standard relations, both of alterna- 
tion, of possible fusion, of conflict, and of casual 
intercourse, that have been emphasized as signifi- 
cant for comprehension of altered personality are 
peculiarly well exhibited in this instructive case ; 
while the value thereof is enhanced by the nor- 
mality and unpreparedness of the subject for any 
such transformation. 

The general impression that emerges from the 
survey of disordered personality is complex be- 
cause of the inherent intricacy of the system of 
phenomena that it significantly reflects. Yet com- 
plexity need not entail confusion or obscurity. 
Two distinctive trends pervade the elaborate types 
of disorganization ; and their points of community 
and contrast are most practically appreciated in 
the light of such actual instances as have been 
reviewed. What is especially pertinent at this 
juncture is to indicate the bearing of these types 
of functional derangement upon the subconscious 
procedures characteristic of the abnormal mental 
life. The genetic "fault" — to use the geologi- 
cal term — that converts what normally would be 
a unified, however complex a structure, into sev- 
eral closely related groupings of strata, with a 
more or less deep cleft between them, sets the 



404 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

problem of the origin as well as of the manner of 
deviation of the phenomenon from the standard 
relations. The interpretation here proposed places 
this origin in the subconscious formations of the 
mental structure. It sets forth that the relinquish- 
ment by the dominant self of any decided measure 
of its sovereignty may assume the character of the 
secession of organized activities from what up to 
the moment of disruption was an originally united 
state. It finds the possibility for such collective 
desertion and its potential synthesis into disturb- 
ing if not usurping upheavals, in a temperamen- 
tal disposition that offers weak resistance to the 
internal dissensions which the complexity of the 
inner life prepares. The interpretation must be 
shaped to recognize the potent instrumentality of 
the mental shock, that at times seems only the 
spark to light the train that threatens the under- 
mined citadel and shakes it from its loosened 
foundations, at times comes as a bombardment 
from without, severe enough to wreck any struc- 
ture built to withstand only the ordinary vicis- 
situdes of varying fortune. It thus recognizes 
a constitutional instability that finds expression 
largely in terms of the disturbed psychological 
intercourse between the formative strata of nor- 
mal personality ; and it recognizes as a coopera- 
tive occasioning factor the direct assault upon the 
nervous substrata of the inner life. It finds evi- 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 405 

dences of the elaboration of these influences not 
alone in the genesis of altered personality, but 
even more significantly, in the* type of disorder 
and disqualification that ensues. There is the 
comprehensive and distinctive mass of evidence 
that the altered self enters into so peculiar a type 
of suppressed, circuitous, and evasive intercourse 
■with its normal counterpart as to require the form- 
ulation of dissociated-mindedness as a constituent 
phase of the mental procedure, — a conception 
that likewise presents certain alliances of the 
seceding personalities as syntheses of such disso- 
ciated tendencies. There is, again, the dethrone- 
ment of psychic autocracy that appears as an 
enfeebled rule over a shrunken domain. Such 
impairment in turn suggests (though with no 
well-defined correlation between the disaster to 
the nervous system and the resulting incapacity 
or segregation) a similar relationship between the 
formerly integral and the now disintegrated realms 
of the mental kingdom, as obtains between the 
several conflicting selves in the warped growth 
of an abnormally maturing nature. It is accord- 
ingly through the liability on the part of the 
unsettlement of the personal household — when 
the disturbance assumes this peculiar type of in- 
vasion of the mental hearth — to bring to the 
surface the disallowed phases of its interests and 
activities ; and again through the liability on the 



406 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

part of the debasement of function to throw the 
individual back upon the deeper, less conscious 
acquisitions of his complex mentality, that dis- 
orders of personality come to be expressive of 
abnormal manifestations of the subconscious. 

In looking backward over the abnormal do- 
main, the zigzag route of our journey takes on a 
greater conformity to a methodical enterprise than 
was possible for the traveler to appreciate while 
en route. There is, indeed, a peculiar temptation, 
when prospecting in these imperfectly charted 
sections of the psychological forest, not only to 
lose one's way altogether, but especially to fail to 
see the woods for the trees. If the clearings that 
have been made serve in some measure as van- 
tage-grounds for a wider outlook, and the paths 
that have been blazed from one to the other 
afford general though defective topographical 
data, the note-books of the expedition should 
serve some more systematic purpose than that of 
an impressionistic record of interesting details. 
Formulae of origin, relations of dependence, types 
of structure, trends of classification, lines of devi- 
ation, should appear as partial answers to the 
problems that prompted the investigation, and 
that increased in complexity with progressive in- 
sight. In such an inquiry, the ability to propose 
the right questions and to shape them favorably 



DISINTEGRATING LAPSES OF PERSONALITY 407 

to their solution, is in itself no unworthy achieve- 
ment. The advance of psychological comprehen- 
sion is as significantly reflected in the altered 
attitudes towards what is regarded as important, 
as in the opening of new quarries of information. 
This is peculiarly the case in the abnormal ranges 
of psychological interpretation. One or another 
part of the domain is commonly explored through 
the attractiveness of some conspicuous feature 
that may be taken to herald the approach to a 
land of strange contrasts, impossible of compre- 
hension by such knowledge of the normal fauna 
and flora as our accredited nature-studies have 
provided. Other principles, bolder hypotheses, it 
may be urged, must be framed to compass the 
phenomena of the abnormal frontier ; and in turn 
to reconstruct the conceptions by which to set 
in revised order the familiar normal estate. An 
effective check to this tendency to fly to other 
evils that we know not of, may be found in the 
comprehensive acquaintance that comes with more 
extensive travel in psychological realms. The 
easy assumption of a multiple mental constitution 
masked in the normal individual, but revealed in 
the higher efficacy of more subtly endowed na- 
tures, loses much of its seeming pertinence when 
confronted with the greater diversity of pheno- 
mena which it fails to illuminate, in opposition 
to the more restricted group that was responsible 



408 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

for its suggestion. However tentative and inade- 
quate our principles of explanation, they may^ 
conform, as far as they go, to proper logical 
requirements. To that end they must aim at 
applicability to the entire range of correlated 
abnormalities, must be adaptable to the natural 
varieties of phenomena as they actually occur, 
must invite and receive experimental verification, 
must open out a vista of related gradation from 
normal to slightly divergent, to pronouncedly 
abnormal types and systems of deviation. Such 
an interpretation, moreover, is likely to accord 
with the illuminating evolutionary conception in 
the light of which such vagaries and disorders 
appear for the most part as instances of warped 
development, of irregular distribution of func- 
tion, of exaggerated arrest, impairment, or decay. 
It is in the construction of such an interpretative 
system that the inquiry in regard to the nature 
and significance of subconscious functions finds 
its fitting consummation. 



PART III 
THEORETICAL 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

Our purpose demands that we now assume an 
architectural responsibility, and endeavor to reach 
a conception of the constructive system that per- 
vades the selected series of natural types which 
our descriptive survey has disclosed. The records 
are to be transformed into plans and elevations and 
sectional views, that shall indicate to the synthetic 
eye the general style, scheme, and treatment, from 
which the details follow in consistent elaboration. 
The functional aspect of the problem may once 
more be emphasized. The measure of awareness 
that shall accrue to any given reaction of ner- 
vous structure to an environmental situation, in 
order to render that response advantageous or 
appropriate, will be determined by the status of 
the need thus satisfied in the organic life of the 
individual. The simplest, recurrent, and constant 
needs will be sufficiently met by neural disposi- 
tions without conscious status, or with the lowest 
type thereof. Yet more advanced and variable 
needs with a standing in consciousness will in- 
volve the service of the simpler mechanisms : and 
this because of the single muscular apparatus 



412 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

that alone is able to bring the function to ex- 
pression. For whether we breathe automatically 
or with intent, swallow reflexly or bolt our food, 
the same motor apparatus is drawn upon. The 
second performance is in each case an elaboration 
of the first ; its neural counterpart is presumably 
a more diffuse functional arrangement within 
which the simpler mechanism, that of itself is 
adequate to primitive situations, is included and 
overlaid by complicating relations. Side by side 
with these simple though integral bits of con- 
duct, which may acquire a conscious status so far 
as they come under control, there are groups of 
dominantly physiological processes that present 
vaguer and more massive relations; — such as di- 
gestion, circulation, and the general metabolic 
changes. The fact that these functions, when dis- 
ordered, have possibilities of irregular intrusion 
into the field of awareness indicates that they 
normally exercise an influence upon the mental 
life. The ever-present organic stream constantly 
affects the specifically directed currents that carry 
conscious occupations ; or, otherwise expressed, in 
the neutrality of their psychic tint, these more 
physiological functions barely emerge from the 
background to which, however, they impart a 
characteristic tone. 

These considerations apply to simple units of 
action that as a whole are candidates for but 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 413 

modest places in consciousness. The analysis is 
more promising in regard to procedures that 
develop a distinct standing in consciousness, but 
the parts of which may be examined in their sim- 
plest uncomplicated stages. Our initial quest is 
for influences that intrude unannounced, remain 
undiscovered when introspectively sought, and yet 
by some indirect testimony betray a functional pre- 
sence in their effect upon the quality of psychic 
response. A distinctive variety of such evidence 
is that formulated in the argument of the psy- 
chic threshold. The physical counterpart of the 
principle is the law of inertia ; it sets forth 
that a stimulus too slight for the sensitiveness of 
the mechanism will register no effect. We cannot 
weigh a grain of sand with the grocer's scales, 
though the chemist's balance readily measures its 
place in a series of minute units. Yet it would 
not be helpful to conclude that a tap upon the 
door of consciousness, so feeble as to pass un- 
heeded, presents the characteristic status of a 
subconscious activity. The phenomenon belongs 
to the group in question ; but the interpretation 
of such exclusion is dubious. So simple a situa- 
tion imperfectly represents the normal occasion 
for the entry of subconscious influences. 

To reach a more complete and more natural 
formulation, we must bear in mind that for the 
most part stimuli enter by definite channels and 



414 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

arouse recognizing responses, likewise that the 
general condition of the invaded tissue markedly 
affects the resulting impression. Ordinary waking 
alertness is a condition of general responsiveness 
to mental solicitations, a favorable exposure to a 
confused murmur of psychic stimulations, like that 
of the composite drone of the busy hives of human 
industry. A thousand dispositions are ever subtly 
vibrant, and in their combined psychic effective- 
ness constitute the manner of wakefulness. Under 
normal conditions we never encounter an absolute 
zero of psychic quiescence ; though we approach 
it, for practical purposes, in moments of most com- 
plete and restful vacancy. The threshold of im- 
pressionability is accordingly inconstant through 
the fluctuation in the neural dispositions whose 
service must be enlisted to clear the highways of 
consciousness. Sleep represents a decided elevation 
of the sensory type of threshold, — though not 
equally for all senses, — and sets up a wall of pro- 
tection which the successful stimulus must scale to 
reach the sleeper ; while the hair-trigger attitude 
of expectant attention, in its eagerness, goes half- 
way to meet the arrival, and thus effects a lowering 
of the threshold-value below the normal. Apathy, 
absorption, prejudice, suggest other conditions 
that complexly affect the terms of admission upon 
which properly qualified applicants succeed in 
delivering their messages. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 415 

It becomes apparent that the normal attitude is 
not a crude, unreflective, stolidly passive one, — 
similar to the attempt, when half-aroused, to 
determine whether there has been a legitimate 
disturbance of our slumber, — is not bent upon 
deciding barely whether there is stimulation or 
quiescence. The physical balance is truly a mere 
quantitative mechanism, and responds no differ- 
ently to a grain of sand than to a grain of gold ; 
but the psychic instrument, even in the simplest 
service, has subtle and complex qualitative sensi- 
bilities that extend beyond the presence to a 
regard for its nature. A sudden noise or flash 
arouses the startled query, " What 's that ? " Stim- 
ulation calls for distinction and interpretation ; and 
to arouse this interest, the interruption must pos- 
sess sufficient energy of quality or momentum to 
override its rivals for notice. It is only when the 
voice of a single claimant towers above the mur- 
mur of diverse sense-stimuli into the clearness of 
an individual hearing that we become conscious 
of it ; and in so doing we distinguish it from the 
general murmur, give it a recognizing nod that 
offers it at least a passport to enter, possibly to 
find a local habitation and a name in our system 
of interpretation. The entrance of the new claim- 
ant for notice has altered the complexion of con- 
sciousness, however momentarily, so that it is dis- 
tinguishable from the attitude of the immediately 



416 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

preceding and of the succeeding moments; and 
it may bring into the range of awareness the 
specific objective occasion of these differences. 
For the practical issue, the challenge, " Who goes 
there," has in fair measure been answered; and 
the even tenor of the mind's progression is re- 
sumed. Passers-by out of range of eye and ear, 
who do not arouse our challenge as they pass, 
simply do not enter into the confines of our sphere 
of activity ; yet if suspicious of a presence, the 
sentinel sounds his alarm, but the answer is too 
feeble to carry back ; the result, though seemingly 
equally negative, may in a closer scrutiny be 
found to be something more than nil. 1 

1 Convincing evidence of the incessant elevation and depression 
of the threshold of awareness is observable in light sleepers. The 
slightest noise is registered by the responsive though sleeping 
nervous system, and finds a sensitive barometer in the changes of 
respiration. If the noise is faint and without meaning, the deeper 
regular breathing is resumed ; if it suggests a possibly legitimate 
appeal, the sleeper comes nearer to wakefulness, is poised in a 
restless moment, that in one issue returns him to slumber, in 
another brings him to wakefulness; a sharper or more significant 
disturbance acts as an immediate call to arms. Yet the entire 
situation is altered if these appeals be directed to the sleeping 
consciousness of a child or of a less impressionable adult. In that 
event, quite energetic stimulation effects no change in breathing 
or seemingly in any other discernible registry. It is not impossi- 
ble that in such contrasted states there enters in the one case a 
real difference of presence and absence of certain neural (and 
psychic) modes of motion, rather than a gradation of degree alone. 
The point of view here upheld is that within the psychically sig- 
nificant field the subnormal stages of stimulation are more con- 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 437 

From an experimental approach, it has been 
determined that if one persists in judging the 
comparative brightness of two tints long after 
these have been so equalized that the eye has lost 
all difference between them, the judgments thus 
accumulated without confidence and seemingly 
by guesswork prove that the judging mechanism, 
in spite of its low introspective rating, reports 
in slight favor of the actually brighter tint. Its 
preferences in this distrusted region remain con- 
sistently placed ; and the balance in favor of the 
really brighter stimulus decreases as the actual 
difference in tint itself grows less. The evidence 
does not stand alone : Present two equal lines to 
the eye, and to the ends of one add pairs of di- 
vergent shadowy strokes, and to the other, pairs 
of convergent strokes ; and the former line, in 
virtue of these contrasted "arrow-tip" additions, 
will appear considerably longer than the latter. 
Now reduce the shadow-strokes to such a degree 
of faintness that the eye fails to detect their 
presence, and continue to judge (naturally with 
diminished confidence) which seems the longer, 
and it will be found that the undetected shadows 
incline the judgments in accord with the illusion 
which their observed presence induces. Here, then, 

sistently regarded as forming a connected series of varying degree, 
which in more developed procedures entail as well distinctive 
changes in complication. 



418 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

we seem to have stripped the subconscious to its 
primal state : for here are two states of conscious- 
ness indistinguishable introspectively, and two sets 
of conditioning 1 stimuli that present physically 
determinable differences ; while, furthermore, the 
cumulative application of the pair of stimuli to 
a suitably perceiving organ results in disclosing 
an effective inclination that escapes the intent 
conscious judgment. For this manner of devi- 
ous influence upon consciousness, but seemingly 
not through consciousness, the term subconscious 
seems peculiarly fitting. 

The interpretation of this procedure is necessa- 
rily hypothetical. A defensible supposition seems 
to be that of an effect upon the general agitation 
of the depths from which the crested wave of 
introspective awareness arises. The wave owes 
its form, its vigor, its moment of appearance, its 
relation to other waves of the series, to a com- 
plex but converging group of influences ; the 
most distinctive factors of the group, those most 
centrally concerned with the psychical status of 
the whole, attract to themselves the consciousness 
quality of the perception ; the others, though not 
of wholly disparate nature, modify the resulting 
impression without thereby qualifying for the 
more highly organized standing. The stream of 
consciousness is a complexly agitated current, — 
its movement conditioned by manifold and diverse 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 419 

forces, — that is now dominantly turned to this 
channel or that, but never exclusively so, while 
the very manner of the variably concentrated 
inclinations embodies its more constant charac- 
teristics. By reason of this very complexity, the 
unitary resultant that becomes the introspective 
representative of the whole cannot really be the 
whole, but only the delegate thereof in the parlia- 
ment of deliberation. None the less, the " con- 
stituency" feeling of the member, though effective, 
is inevitably vague, composite, a mass influence ; 
while his expressions carry an individual, yet withal 
a "party" flavor. Consciousness, particularly in 
its more practical phases, requires a sustaining 
registry ; it must find definite alighting-places to 
mark and simplify the stages of its progress ; it is 
not equally concerned with all phases of the com- 
posite totality, and limits its selective registry 
to such aspects as by their nature are favored 
for the central purpose. Consciousness is far from 
being an equalized projection upon a common 
plane of all the objects in the field, with a reten- 
tion of equal sharpness of outline for each ; it 
is not even a photographic copy that records a 
faithful representation in perspective of what- 
ever affects the sensitized negative ; it is simply 
a sketch, an interpretation, in which certain cher- 
ished features represent the impression and the 
appeal of the whole, while yet the manner of its 



420 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

inclusions is measurably influenced by the details 
which fail to appear in its record. More abstractly 
put, the formula indicates that a psychic moment 
is the resultant of a specifically inclined activity 
reared upon a foundation of more generally con- 
ditioning influences ; and the experimental issues 
above cited stand as registries of subconscious 
influences stripped of complication, because in 
these enforced attitudes the specifically inclined 
activity is so tenuous, so near to the vanishing- 
point, that introspectively the essay seems a 
mere mimicry, and the result becomes expressive 
of subconscious influences. The subconscious 
procedures, whether thus isolated or whether 
retained in their natural habitat, form a corpo- 
rate part of the psychic moment. Their presence 
is inherent in every such ruffle of the stream ; 
yet how far their influence upon the wave may 
expand towards the stage of explicit appraisal, 
remains subject to the evolutionary conditions of 
degree and circumstance. 

The principle of the subconscious, to maintain 
its prestige as a commanding influence in the men- 
tal life, should find manifold corroboration in the 
natural mode of exercise of mental function. It 
would accordingly be both unnecessary and unnat- 
ural for the entire range of components of the in- 
tegral procedure to be present in consciousness in 
order to contribute effectively to the actual issue. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 421 

Practical results are compatible with quite modest 
analytical proficiency; and even when acquired 
knowledge illuminates the procedures, it may 
affect practice but slightly. Under this principle, 
our psychological equipment should be found to 
be replete with arrangements that develop into ex- 
cellently serviceable organs of apprehension with- 
out yielding a knowledge — a feeling-awareness 
— of their modus operandi ; and it may be added 
as a not very remote consequence, that in this 
fact lies an important reason why there arises 
such a science as psychology, whose purpose it 
becomes to bring to light these introspectively 
unrevealed relations. The general emphasis is upon 
the end with a careless disregard for the means. 
If the senses bring their food-stuff to the mind, it 
seems to be indifferent how far we become aware 
of the details of such ministration ; yet we cannot 
but acquire a more or less definite acquaintance 
with the nature of these serviceable devices. The 
infant can hardly avoid the discovery that vision 
comes through the eyes, hearing through the ears, 
feeling through the fingers, and possibly more ele- 
mentarily than all, that an interesting range of 
sensations is gained through tongue and lips. But 
both child and adult — if uninformed — may fail 
to distinguish properly what portions of the com- 
posite sensations obtained during eating enter 
through smell, through taste, through touch, or 



422 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

through movement; consciousness reports that 
what is in the mouth tastes like currant jelly, and 
does not analytically realize that the " smooth " 
sensation is tactile, the easily melting quality mo- 
tor, the flavor the contribution of smell, and the 
sweetness combined with acidity the sole gustatory 
factor. Admittedly all these qualities are appre- 
ciated by the practical consciousness, and through 
their efficiency it recognizes the morsel to be 
currant jelly. Likewise is it admittedly important 
not to confuse lack of explicit or of analytical 
awareness with non-representation in conscious- 
ness. None the less, the instance is pertinent in 
its essential aspect, as will presently appear. 1 

A parallel status obtains with reference to the 
modes of working of single sensory systems. The 
system brings awareness of the common end, but 
not of the contributory means ; though such con- 
tributors may be quite competent to qualify in 
varying degree for explicit awareness, when at- 
tention provides a favoring occasion. A complex 

1 It thus becomes possible that we should possess and utilize a 
form of sensibility without discovery of the ministering sense- 
organ, if the exercise of such sense does not involve explicit con- 
tributory factors of motor control, and brings its messages in the 
form of vague righting and disordering tendencies. Such is the 
status of the organ of equilibrium, which the layman finds no 
practical occasion to discover. In conformity with such possibility, 
it has from time to time been suspected (though now disproved) 
that we possess a magnetic sense, which would presumably be- 
come effective in a wholly subconscious manner. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 423 

example appears in the combination of visual 
data that jointly afford knowledge of the depth- 
relations, the stereoscopic quality of space. The 
use of the eyes does not inform us of the minute 
but proportioned differences in the retinal images 
that actually serve to distinguish between the 
curvature of an umbrella-frame and the flatness 
of a spider-web, between a three-dimensional wire 
model of a truncated pyramid and the shadow 
thereof. The mind receives with surprise the 
demonstration that we ordinarily assume the illu- 
mination to come from above, and that accord- 
ingly the photograph of a hollow indentation 
— with the lower half bright and the upper in 
shadow — will, if held inverted, be transformed 
into an equally conspicuous protuberance, for the 
reason that only a convex surface would ordi- 
narily appear bright above and dark below. Yet 
to this detail we can consciously attend. These 
phases of more or less explicit recognition thus 
enter with variable emphasis into conscious opera- 
tions, whether the elemental components readily 
qualify, or not at all, for a separate audience. 

It would thus appear that the influences that 
incline me to venture my guess that one tint is 
brighter than another, though my strained atten- 
tion reports no confident judgment, participate 
in the psychic process concerned in a manner 
akin, though not altogether coordinate with the 



424 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

influences that are involved in the maintenance 
of the body's equilibrium, in gathering data for 
the construction of a world of three dimensions, 
or in interpreting the quality of sound. The two 
types are admittedly not the same ; for there is a 
difference of rank, of status, but equally a kinship 
of service. In the first instance, by the very sup- 
position, the physical difference in question is sup- 
pressed out of reach of the introspective grasp, 
and yet exercises an influence otherwise detecti- 
ble; in the second group the activity approaches 
more nearly to the status of mature awareability ; 
and it becomes possible to point out stages of 
increasing privilege, quite parallel to those stages 
of increased control that obtain among types of 
reflex action, all of which are reflex, but not 
equally so. Thus the light-and-shade relations 
of concavity and convexity are readily separably 
attended to; so is another factor in the stereo- 
scopic perception, not as yet mentioned, namely, 
the obstructions of more distant objects or parts 
of the same object by nearer ones. These yield 
such definite types of awareness that they may be 
independently observed ; yet, after all, their sepa- 
rate appreciation as light-and-shade distinctions 
and as relations of obstruction is by no means a 
mental observation of the same status as their sub- 
servient participation in the perception of solidity, 
in which composite impression these factors ever 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 425 

remain subconsciously integrated. However much 
we may happen to know about the process, we 
still immediately first get the total impression o£ 
perspective, and then, if we like, proceed in a 
separate investigation to analyze the situation. 

From the vantage-ground of these analyses our 
outlook upon the receptive activities of the mind 
justifies the generalization that the mode of entry 
to and the reception by the mind typically com- 
prise a composite procedure. This procedure takes 
its name from the issue thereof most conspicuous 
in consciousness, but achieves such individual dis- 
tinction through the merged influence of subcon- 
scious factors which, though not in consciousness, 
may be said to be of it. In further illustration 
of the comprehensive significance in natural pro- 
cedures of the subconscious participation, a most 
characteristic trait applicable to an extensive range 
of sensory-perceptions may be brought forward : 
it is that many of our senses proceed upon a gen- 
eral mass-perception that appraises effects as a 
whole, that is but feebly analytic and quite de- 
cidedly impressionistic in its acquisitive temper. 
Furthermore, the naive, less trained judgment 
that is most free from the intrusions of science- 
begotten insight and the dominance of metric 
systems, or the application of judgment in direc- 
tions in which such training is of least avail, 
will exhibit the tendency to this mass-impres- 



426 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

sionism, this merged appraisal, in its more dis- 
tinctive and natural forms. In judging the 
tone-quality of a piano, the color-harmony of a 
wall-paper, the mass-impression makes the first ap- 
peal, and for the layman possibly the sole appeal ; 
nor is this due wholly to the aesthetic aspect of 
the judgment ; though it is the fact that the 
complexity and unanalyzed status of the aesthetic 
appraisal constitutes it a notable illustration of 
the impressionistic tendency of the mind. Yet 
aesthetic appreciation depends upon sensitiveness 
to sensory distribution ; we must perceive differ- 
ently to feel differently, though the intensity of 
the pleasure-effect may overpower the less emo- 
tional perceptive process. The false note of the 
ambitious tenor sets our nerves on edge, but only 
if our ears possess the proper sensitiveness ; the 
ear that is immune to the discord proves to be 
weak in making bare distinctions of pitch. Like- 
wise is the emotional appraisal the more primi- 
tive procedure, the more immediately the result 
of useful adjustment, and therefore in this aspect 
proper to cite. Feeling is older than knowing. 
Whether a morsel is to be accepted or rejected, 
whether we are to feel attraction or repulsion 
towards a solicitation, is the fundamental query, 
which later is replaced by the logic-infused attitude 
of determining decisions by systematized discern- 
ment, and of deciding conduct by reason. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 427 

Accordingly, in the manner of our being af- 
fected, the recognitional and the pleasurable 
factors themselves merge. In the very recognition 
of an olive or a persimmon by its astringency and 
flavor, there enters the palatability to our indi- 
vidual taste. To the inattentive eye potatoes and 
parsnips may present a confusingly similar appear- 
ance ; the unsuspecting partaker who approaches 
the preparation as potato, and who has an aver- 
sion to parsnips, is likely to find the sensation 
induced by the first mouthful one of general dis- 
like, out of which the specific recognition of the 
objectionable vegetable quickly emerges. Even 
when the mind is concretely on distinctions bent, 
the same general impressionism dominates, though 
in more specifically directed manner. The expert 
eye in a cursory glance distinguishes between 
pearls and beads, topaz and colored glass ; between 
cast metal and forged or hammered work; be- 
tween machine embroidery or lace and the hand- 
fashioned product; 1 between a "composition" 

1 The distinction between hand-made and machine products is 
the most generic of this group, and offers at least one common 
element that easily reaches explicit recognition ; this is the factor 
of regular uniformity, particularly of symmetrical or repeated 
members. The invariability of the machine-made article leaves a 
general impression that is easily supplemented by the specific 
detection of its cause. An interesting distinction of this type has 
been added to the sphere of auditory perception by the invention 
of piano-playing mechanisms; though these are equipped with 
quite a range of regulating devices to give expression to the per- 



428 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ornament or moulding and one of carved wood ; 
between an antique chair and a modern reproduc- 
tion ; between a Persian rug and an imitation ; in 
general, between the genuine and its counterfeit, 
although it is ever ready in doubtful issues to re- 
sort to a careful conscious search for recognition- 
marks ; while forgeries are by no means unknown, 
so skillful as to deceive all but those gifted with 
the keenest insight, in whom suspicion is first 
aroused by a vague discordant impression, and 
then verified by minute and ingenious tests. In 
deciding between cotton and linen, touch may be 
called upon to add its equally unanalyzed impres- 
sion of the feel of the texture, while yet holding 
in reserve the ultimate test under the magnifying 
glass that reveals the difference in structure of 
the thread. In all these impressionistic judgments 
of discrimination the characteristic dependence 
upon the general effect emphasizes the natural 
training of the senses that acquire expertness by 
practice, — only incidentally reenforced by pre- 
cept and a knowledge of the tricks of the trade, — 
by a sensitiveness to results with subconscious 
appreciations of the constituent details. It is thus 
that the craftsman or artist feels his way to the 
effect that he desires to produce, proceeds by 

formance, the musical ear is not likely to confuse the pianist's 
rendering with that of this ingenious and partially modulated 
substitute. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 429 

the impressionistic rejections and approvals of 
his color and form sensibilities, and develops an 
individual style which the critic but imperfectly 
succeeds in reducing to analyzed statement. We 
may be quite certain that the visible qualities that 
ultimately lead the connoisseur to decide which 
canvases are the authentic products of Botti- 
celli's brush, and which the work of other mas- 
ters of kindred manner, were but subconsciously 
effective in the artist's creative consciousness. 

A review of the status of these receptive atti- 
tudes may profitably take note of the different 
privileges that the several senses enjoy in the 
conscious registry. In this aspect vision is easily 
dominant ; and man figures as a visually-minded 
agent. Within the visual field, it is in turn form 
that is the conscious and explicit sense, while color 
is eminently impressionistic. The conscious repre- 
sentative of an experience in the memory-images 
that facilitate its recall is likely to cluster about the 
visual components,. These are apt to be clear-cut 
and prominent, are amenable to system and de- 
scription, and occupy a naturally favored position 
in the mind's registry. The recollections of travel, 
though based upon impressions experienced com- 
positely by service of many senses, are conserved 
largely as visual pictures. For this reason the 
photograph is selected to recall the impressions, 
and by this partial record arouses the general 



430 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

mental and emotional appeal of the original. As 
an expression of this quality of the human mind, 
the contrast has been suggested that, while to 
the master his dog is a visual perception and 
is thought of as an image of form and color, pos- 
sibly to the dog the master is centrally a per- 
ception of an individual odor to which the visual 
appearance is but a supplement. Thus each con- 
tribution to the resultant impression brings its 
offering with an assignable measure of explicitness 
that becomes an index of its rating in conscious 
registry. 

It would take us too far afield to trace the 
" conscious " value of each of the senses. Hearing 
— apart from its use in speech, which is a matter 
of interpretation largely — is markedly impression- 
istic. Indeed, the quality of the musical tone in its 
relation to the system of contributory overtones, 
that themselves without separate representation in 
consciousness compose the resulting impression, 
is the relation that the psychologist selects to 
exemplify the typical status of the merging of a 
sensible effect, a distinctive impression, on the 
basis of a cooperation of individually receding 
elements, merged in a recognizable issue, that 
makes its appeal and its registry as an individuality 
with no suggestion of being an ensemble. That 
this type of effect, seemingly a solo performance, 
but in reality a chorus led by a commanding voice, 



THE CONCEPTION" OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 431 

may be regarded as one phase of development of 
a subconscious procedure is the thesis here sup- 
ported. Just how far one finds in auditory images 
favorable or preferred material for conscious 
thought is determined largely by his individual 
leanings ; to some the murmur of the sea and the 
sighing of the wind in the forest most strongly 
recall the original experience, to others it is the 
dash of the spray and the swaying of the branches 
overhead. To each of these experiences there 
attaches a peculiar feel of the air, partly tactile, 
partly organic as affecting respiration, partly a 
quality of odor, or even in the case of the salt 
tang, of taste. All mingle with variable degrees 
of explicitness in the total impression ; and any 
one may serve by a vague subconscious suggesti- 
bility to direct the associations of our musings, 
tracking a trail not by the discerning scent of the 
hound, but by vague feelings of subconsciously 
suggestive relations. In yet other ways do im- 
pressions that hover near and seemingly waste 
their fragrance upon a desert mind, affect the 
movements of its subtle progression through these 
subconsciously motived influences, that indeed 
blossom unseen by the mind's eye, yet contribute 
to the mood of its visions. 

All this is even more intimately characteristic 
of the aesthetic than of the discriminative function 
of sense, of appreciation than of judgment. It 



432 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

is through pleasure and pain that Nature impresses 
her simplest lessons. Immediate needs, to insure 
attention, are fitted with this convincing appeal 
to feeling. In the lowly beginning, where use 
is commanding, instant impressions of gain and 
loss are too urgent to wait upon analysis; and 
again at the top, in the leisurely and cultivated 
satisfactions of aesthetic craving, analysis fails to 
follow, and appreciation leans heavily upon in- 
herent sensibilities, that bring their messages in a 
language that is not articulate. Thus compre- 
hensively, but with fair allowance for the equally 
extensive service of conscious apprehension, does 
the measure of subconscious efficiency span the 
distant stages of mental evolution. 

We thus recognize as types of subconscious 
ministration, first, those whose function is fairly 
well set by natural provisions and is modified but 
slightly with the development of the organism. 
Within this field there are again two sub-types : 
the one of vague organic sensation that contrib- 
utes to the background of sensibility ; the other 
specific sense-excitements of simple, uncompli- 
cated status. The second and far more extensive 
class is composed of procedures that require con- 
siderable practice to develop their natural tenden- 
cies, but which once acquired may again lapse to 
lesser concern in conscious direction. Such is dis- 
tinctively the field of habit, the nature of which, 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 433 

as well as of the lapse to which it is so markedly 
subject, has been amply set forth. It is further 
notable that in the process of such acquisition, 
the conscious element itself becomes shifted from 
means to end ; hence, we can give far better ac- 
counting of what our habits do than of how the 
effect is produced. All this again emphasizes the 
subconscious type of facility by which habit, our 
second nature, follows in the footsteps of our first 
nature, by enlisting minor facilities reduced to 
lesser places in conscious concern in the interests 
of larger specifically conscious consummations. 
The art of doing and of thinking, to whatever 
field applied, requires the familiarity begotten of 
integration of large experience, the acquisition 
of the special technique that allows concentra- 
tion upon the end with ready service of trained 
facilities. The happy support of the associative 
mechanism, the crowding of the antechamber of 
consciousness with germane and worthy suitors, 
express variously the necessary dependence of the 
issue upon previous facilitation. The very com- 
plexity of the mental life demands the successive 
automatization of one facility and another in 
cumulative inclusion ; we rise upon the steps of 
our habitualized selves, grown familiar to their 
task. It is because the conquered stages of our 
acquisitions may now be entered into with di- 
minution of effort, that newer victories may be 



434 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

achieved. In our mental exploring expeditions, we 
establish provisioning stations, constantly making 
fresh excursions from a newer base, while yet we 
flit familiarly among the older stages that mark 
our progress. 

It is easy to understand the advantages of 
the natural provisions by which so large a por- 
tion of our facilities pass through this stage of 
conscious acquisition before lapsing to a subcon- 
scious status. We recognize the enlarged scope, 
the complexity and the precision of adjustments 
that may be embodied in the highest ranges of 
expertness. Our complex and profitable habits 
cannot be primarily automatic because their very 
automatism, to be adequately plastic, must be 
adjusted to complex and shifting groups of situ- 
ations; their only possibility of assuming a pro- 
perly subordinate position in the mind's occupa- 
tion is through a preliminary stage of decreasingly 
conscious habitualization. Out of mere random 
movement interesting details emerge ; but once 
emerging, are sought for and fixed by endless 
repetition. Out of trial and error and critical 
experimentation emerge the habits that become 
embedded in our subconscious selves. These de- 
layed proficiencies wait upon conscious guidance 
and a directive will, and achieve, each in its man- 
ner, a variable importance in the mental admin- 
istration ; through such education the hand and 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 435 

voice, by which peculiarly these motor develop- 
ments are served, become the preferred organs of 
conscious expression. To have passed through 
the medium of consciousness, even though no 
longer wholly moving in this medium, imparts a 
different tone and status to a facility than to have 
inherited the same more nearly ready for service. 
It is at all events different, and for most facilities 
better, to have consciously acquired and then lost 
than never to have acquired at all ; — a relation as 
pertinent of the useful automatism of daily service 
as of the vestiges in training and appreciation 
deposited by the long forgotten college course in 
Greek or Calculus. The mental negative must be 
dipped in the bath of consciousness, to be pro- 
perly developed and bring to light its impressed 
possibilities. 

The analogies between the primary and lapsed 
subconscious procedure are interesting. We have 
found that swallowing, as well as walking, proceeds 
more naturally when uncomplicated by conscious 
interference. An over-direction of consciousness 
disturbs the natural precision of primary automa- 
tisms and acquired habits alike. It becomes easier 
in determining whether the e comes before the i, 
or after, to give the hand free scope to run the 
word off in subconscious facility. 1 The process 

1 The following is an instance more striking by reason of loug 
interval of disuse : An elderly lady, confronted with the problem 



436 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

once automatized is more readily reinstated in 
subconscious {i. e. lapsed conscious) terms than 
in the terms of its original conscious acquisi- 
tion. It thus becomes intelligible why the impetus 
to set into movement a sequence of automatized 
procedures may dispense with the starting signal 
of conscious initiative, and proceed to a fitting 
issue in subconscious independence ; in these, as 
doubtless in many instances, the subconscious 
clue is more effective than the conscious, when 
both are deliberately tested. 

It is again interesting to observe the variable de- 
pendence in different individuals upon the greater 
or less degree of explicitness of their procedures 
in predominantly motor acquisitions. While one 
billiard player deliberately plans his stroke by 
angles and the parallelogram of forces, another 
may depend upon an impression and the amateur 
reliance on general results. If the position of the 
balls suggests a familiar stroke, either player will 
deliver the affair to the impulses, and the thing is 
done almost before it is planned ; the more diffi- 
cult stroke calls forth their divergence of con- 
scious regulation. For a similar reason, it is often 

of threading a sewing-machine of an obsolete type, failed in the 
attempt consciously to recall or reason out the process from frag- 
mentary impressions; but a relapse to a semi-automatic atti- 
tude in which the fingers were encouraged to cboose their own 
manipulations was successful, — a success that could then be 
repeated by reasoned efforts.. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 437 

easier to teach another by demonstration than by 
instruction ; the novice best acquires the stroke in 
skating while supported between two experts, — 
a proceeding paralleled by the teacher who guides 
the hand of the child in teaching the latter to 
write; for by such guided "coaching" the mus- 
cles learn in their own language what to try for. 
In still other facilities in which reasoned relations 
combine with motor knack, it is ever a nice deci- 
sion to know how far to lean upon explicit under- 
standing and how far upon the implicit, subcon- 
scious rule of thumb. The procedures that embody 
in the habit of their accomplishment the more de- 
cided measure of implicit status are the ones that 
approximate more nearly to, and under the release 
of guidance favor, the independent functioning 
of the subconscious; for these will be capable of 
execution with lesser attention, in conditions 
varying from slight abstraction to developed au- 
tomatism. On the other hand, the tasks that we 
approach and pursue in clearly analytic step make 
closer demands upon conscious direction ; these it 
will be possible to achieve under any other atti- 
tude only by intervention of peculiarly favorable 
(abnormal) conditions. 

Acquisition, elaboration, expression, compose 
the triumvirate that direct the affairs of the mind. 
We have sought the most distinctive clue to the 
nature of subconscious functions in their mode of 



438 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

entry into the psychic forum. But entry implies 
some act of reception, some incorporating proced- 
ure, that of itself constitutes an initial elaborative 
step. My doorbell has just rung and has aroused 
my interest ; and from the snatches of sound that 
reach me in my study, I am able to recognize the 
voice that inquired for me. The processes furnish- 
ing that recognition are merely subservient to the 
end, and I cannot say how I formed the impres- 
sion ; yet the act may be called a conscious re- 
cognition, though it contains subservient implicit 
factors. But even if I had been at the moment 
sufficiently absorbed in my writing, I might still 
have formed a correct guess as to the identity of 
the unannounced visitor. In that event I should 
naturally call it an example of subconscious audi- 
tory recognition. The whole difference lies in 
this : that in the latter case I remained unaware 
both of the complex factors of my recognition 
and of the occupation as a whole, whereas in the 
former case the actual recognizing moment took 
a place within the general current of the mind's 
concern and received an effective attention. 

The presence or absence of this last element is 
a critical factor in the status of the whole. It has 
already been characterized as the act of incorpo- 
ration, and is apparently indispensable to legal- 
ize any transaction for which the mind may be 
held responsible. That such is not the case, our 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 439 

descriptive findings amply set forth. We seem 
accordingly driven to the conclusion that some 
kind of incorporation really takes place, yet fails 
to yield the distinctive feeling of legitimacy that 
attends it when accomplished with normal aware- 
ness. The manner of such incorporation depends 
upon the interest or cordiality of the welcome that 
goes out to the new claimant. We have been deter- 
mining the status of a subconscious procedure 
under the supposition of a normally efficient alert- 
ness, a favorably disposed attitude of hospitality, 
yet inevitably not an indiscriminate reception of 
all comers. Rival suitors for notice and crowds 
of relevant and irrelevant claimants must fre- 
quently meet and jostle one another at the portals 
of the mind ; and this busy and diverse traffic 
brings it about that a given attitude is favorable 
to one claimant and not to another. Such com- 
plication introduces a new variable term into the 
formula, whose value appears when we consider 
in how far the policy of the " open door " ap- 
plies to the mental intercourse, and what complex 
conditions of ingress are enforced at the gate- 
ways of consciousness. That in useful thought 
there is more or less stringent policing of the 
highways, and that fantastic processions of revery 
may enter the gates when such surveillance is 
relaxed, has been duly recorded. Our present 
inquiry is a more specialized one, and relates to 



440 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the organic contrivances, the hidden springs, that 
operate this psychic mechanism. The temper of 
consciousness is itself ever shifting from con- 
servative to liberal, — the portal now generously 
ample and now narrowly exclusive, — and yet 
retains its variably selective preferences, and vises 
with more or less formality the passports pre- 
sented for entrance. 

That the latter office may be perfunctorily 
performed brings it about that sojourners are 
found within the gates to the surprise of the now 
more alert sentinel. The circumstances favoring 
such subconscious entrance are twofold : the first 
relating to the character of the applicant, the sec- 
ond to the condition of the incorporating registry. 
Familiarity is a dominant factor of the former 
type. I am apt to recognize my visitor's voice 
subconsciously, because voices and the whole ex- 
perience of visitors and doorbells are familiar, 
and fall within the circle of my easy interpreta- 
tions. I may with equal subconsciousness inter- 
pret a verbal message delivered by a familiar 
voice to my otherwise absorbed self. But too 
complex an appeal will not be thus assimilated ; 
if the words are spoken in a foreign tongue, even 
though I understand the language, they are not 
likely to achieve such interpretation, and will 
either remain unattended to, — except as a vague 
auditory impression, — or will arouse an attention 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 441 

adequate to their conscious apprehension. If my 
absorption is deep, my eyes wander vacantly over 
the immediate horizon of possible appeal, and 
take in almost nothing either wittingly or unwit- 
tingly ; yet these organs are sufficiently trained 
in subconscious service to readily catch impres- 
sions in a fleeting, inattentive glance, which are 
then both seen and interpreted while my incorpo- 
rating self is never called away from its otherwise 
directed occupation. My eye is caught by signifi- 
cant or personally interesting headings in the 
newspaper, and is quite unlikely not to be ar- 
rested by the unexpected occurrence of my own 
name in print, all of which it usually turns over 
immediately or with slight delay — but occasion- 
ally seemingly not at all — to the uses of the 
conscious self. But I cannot subconsciously catch 
items in a Dutch or a Spanish newspaper, though 
the words have meaning to my attentive under- 
standing. 

When, however, the variations of the second 
condition, that of the degree of absorption, be- 
come more pronounced, the relations present pos- 
sibilities of indefinite development. When my 
attention wanders from the printed page and I 
" come to " after a brief " brown study," during 
which my eyes have continued their line-by-line 
incursions, bringing me to the end of a para- 
graph which I was just entering upon when the 



442 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

" absence " came on, I am quite likely to find 
that I can recall almost nothing of the absently 
read paragraph, and even recognize no more 
when I read it attentively a second time. But 
whether my subconscious energy is so feebly 
effective depends upon my psychic condition. If 
I am quite fatigued or the revery profound, it 
absorbs me wholly, and reading is a vain mim- 
icry ; but if the wandering had some more inci- 
dental motive and came upon me amid general 
mental alertness, I find that while I have been 
mainly thinking of something else, I have ab- 
sorbed fragments of the printed lines, though 
I may be skeptical of the fact until I put it to 
the test. 1 It is likewise conceivable that I should 
have been so intensely absorbed in my writing as 
to have remained oblivious alike to the jarring 

1 This is naturally not the same attitude as an intentional divi- 
sion of the attention between two unrelated tasks; though the 
possibility that creates the one is affiliated to that which begets 
the other, both being dependent upon variations in the breadth 
and depth of consciousness. I can keep on writing while listening 
to a few words addressed tome, but neither must be too absorb- 
ing. Too deep immersion in the one involves error, arrest, and 
an increased attention, to the detriment of the rival appeal. I 
may find that under such circumstances I have written more than 
I thought I had, or have heard more than I can at the moment 
recall. With a slightly transformed attitude, I find that I have 
been consciously writing and subconsciously listening ; or that 
ray too intent listening has reduced the writing to an automatic 
state. The shifting values in consciousness of each of the rival 
occupations is the point involved. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 443 

doorbell and to the inquiring voice ; and possibly 
I should find, when I reached a less absorbing 
moment, that I had a vague feeling of having ex- 
perienced a momentary tendency to an interrup- 
tion, but nothing more definite in content, nothing 
that later emerged to a more explicit state. All 
this emphasizes how variably within the subcon- 
scious realm the apperception hovers near to or far 
from a full-fledged incorporative nod, and finds in 
such variation an essential conditioning quality of 
a subconscious procedure. On the one hand, the 
receptive appeal to which I consciously respond 
when my normal attention is properly directed, 
proves not to be the whole of the appeal that be- 
comes effective ; and on the other hand, while I 
am thus responding, I am not wholly deprived of 
possibilities of response in other directions along 
the familiar channels of my unified experience, 
such possibilities being dependent on the specific 
kind of consciousness dominant at the moment. 
Finally, some special type of attitude is always 
dominant ; and it would be wholly impossible to 
interpret a subconscious procedure except with 
reference to some specific attitude. For many 
analytical purposes it is proper to assume that the 
attitude conforms with sufficient constancy to 
such a standard ; but at the present juncture, 
the variations introduced by fluctuation in atti- 
tude become increasingly significant. 



444 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The elaborative procedure occupies the central 
place in the psychological system. Its most re- 
presentative movement is the linkage of associa- 
tion ; but liberally conceived, it extends from the 
simplest bond embedded in neural disposition to 
the most involved relations of conclusion to pre- 
mise. With regard to the simple bits of conduct, 
the principle of elaboration indicates that feel- 
ing is so closely preliminary to doing, that after 
but moderate experience, the interpretative step 
from one to the other requires so feeble a type 
of awareness as to assume the distinctive sub- 
conscious stamp ; with regard to more complex 
behavior, it provides for the most varied, intricate, 
and indirect intervening steps, that reflect the 
entire range of mental operations. Their typical 
subconscious status may appear in the incident of 
the ring at my doorbell. Suppose that when I try 
to recognize the voice of my visitor, I find the neb- 
ulous vision of a face looming before me, or I find 
myself reconstructing the interior of a local thea- 
tre, and I determine that the face belongs to the 
owner of the voice, whom I last saw at the theatre 
a few evenings ago. The associative mechanism 
is clear, and is plainly dependent upon the gen- 
eral mode of working of my mental elaborations. 
These may bring their products to the review of 
my introspection; but the steps themselves are 
not introspectively revealed. Their happy support 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 445 

of conscious purpose is admittedly an uncertain 
factor, embodying a subconscious element. Yet so 
long as I give my mind to the recognition of my 
visitor, I am disposed to regard the procedure 
as conscious. If, however, I had kept on with my 
work quite irresponsive to either bell or voice, and 
later had " come to " at a less intent moment to 
wonder why the vision of the face was haunting 
me, and only after some trouble had succeeded 
in reinstating the incentive and the path of my 
thought-progression, I should describe the steps 
that took me spontaneously from voice to face, or 
from voice to theatre, as an associative elaboration 
equally subconscious with the supposed unaware- 
ness of the sound of bell or voice. The difference 
of status between conscious and subconscious 
elaboration, when thus stripped of complications, 
becomes quite elusive, and seems to lie wholly in 
the fact that I was bent upon the identification in 
the one case and not in the other. Yet the same 
result appears when the intent is maintained or 
dismissed. We know familiarly that often when 
we abandon the search for the name we are so 
eager to recall, it suddenly intrudes itself into an 
irrelevant moment ; and yet we know equally well 
that effort is needed for results, and that the least 
progressive occupation is that of resting upon our 
oars. Some further distinction is needed to present 
the relations involved in natural perspective. 



446 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The desired distinction brings into notice that 
the brain, like the heart, is always active, though 
with pulsations far more intricate, the varieties 
of its service indefinitely more complex. Mental 
work and play, diversion, revery, vacancy, sleep, 
suggest the wide range of attitude that determines 
the flow of conscious and of subconscious occu- 
pation. The central distinction with reference 
to which these attitudes find their place is that 
between purposeful effort and easy-going, nat- 
ural drift of thought. Some thinking and some 
dreaming enter into all of our mental proced- 
ures : the extremes are sharply contrasted, but give 
way to delicate transitions in the middle registers. 
The processes of elaboration in these two trends 
are fundamentally affiliated by the community of 
material dispositions upon which each proceeds ; 
they differ more or less in their combining tend- 
encies, the patterns into which they weave the 
threads, possibly even in the type of loom and 
shuttle that they employ. The individual asso- 
ciative trends and the residues of personal experi- 
ence, equally in idle romancing as in the solution 
of set problems, determine the alighting-points 
of the flitting and perching movement of thought. 
In an intimate sense, the actual fluttering of wings 
is subconscious, marked only in consciousness by 
the transient poises of momentary arrest. It is 
these that I try to reinstate in retracing the spon- 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 447 

taneous yet coherent stages of my thought ; my 
success depends upon the measure of system that 
controls my mental progress. Logical steps are 
more amenable to chain and compass than ima- 
ginative construction ; but not infrequently the 
page of jottings and captions that I hastily set 
down when I was forced to drop my task fail to 
reinstate to my mind, twenty-four hours later, 
the projected unfoldment of my theme; so that 
when eventually recovered by circuitous aids, I 
know that it would have been differently done 
and possibly better done at the first sitting. My 
task combined, as most composition does, a direc- 
tive logical trend interspersed with illustrative and 
constructive embellishment ; and though I rein- 
state the general trend, as recorded in the alight- 
ing-points of my argument, I can never hope to 
reproduce a second time the precise form and 
flavor of my expression. 

Such considerations draw attention to the mar- 
velous intricacy of the associative ground upon 
which, and in which, designs significant and fanci- 
ful unceasingly play. The movement is infused 
with varieties and qualities of awareness; such 
awareness is dominantly of ends and not of means, 
of halting-places and not of flight, and is nor- 
mally termed conscious thought when dominated 
by deliberate purpose, and when a directive atten- 
tion, selecting and rejecting as it goes, is given 



448 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

to the successive stages of the associative product. 
It is called subconscious when, after quite pro- 
longed submersion in the depths of the associa- 
tive waters, a result emerges that stands in some 
fitting relation to our interests. The criterion 
that we apply is ever that of logical or psycho- 
logical fitness. That we continue to think of 
something or other so long as we are mentally alert, 
offers no peculiar problem; a considerable mea- 
sure of erratic sequence we also accept as the nat- 
ural mental lot; but the occasional emergence of 
rational coherent groupings, with special pertinence 
to dominant interests, at once arouses inquiring 
surprise. Clearly, the specific trait of subcon- 
scious elaboration is in the production, with low- 
ered oversight, of sequences that present a more 
or less striking infusion of cohering purpose. As 
such, it is the natural sequence of subconscious 
acquisition. The interpretation of the entrance 
of an appeal is inevitably bound up with the 
further spread of significance of that appeal, as 
it becomes absorbed by the apperceptive medium, 
and becomes effective in thought or revery. 
Indeed, the distinction resolves itself into the 
length of the submerged intervals between emer- 
ging moments of awareness. The normal rela- 
tion involves a considerable variation according 
to temperament ; and the abnormal relation may 
maintain subconscious elaboration for such long 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 449 

periods — like the expert diver swimming long 
stretches under water — that we are surprised to 
observe how far away from the starting-point the 
next appearance emerges, and are even tempted 
to suspect some measure of amphibious endow- 
ment in the performer. As a fact, however, it 
is in normal dependence upon the fresh air 
of consciousness that our mental life finds its 
natural respiration. Conscious utilization of sub- 
consciously elaborated data remains the normal 
formula of thought. We label the product 
conscious when the drafts upon the reservoir are 
frequent and overt; we call them subconscious 
when fewer and elusive ; but we hold the term 
peculiarly pertinent when the issue conforms more 
to purpose and interest than to mere capricious 
re very. 

It is in the expressive issue of thought in con- 
duct that the mental unit of procedure finds its 
point of culmination. The goal of impressionability 
and elaboration is set by action; conduct and the 
embodiment of motive in character present the 
final test of our insight and our deliberations. 
Life is activity, and the breathing-spell of passive 
absorption is but the recovery for the next stroke 
of the oar. What we do and say becomes the 
standard index of what we think and feel. The 
convergence of awareness upon this consummating 
step is thus a natural emphasis; and as the object 



450 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

of special concern, its direction would seemingly 
be but slightly subject to lapse to a subconscious 
level; but upon closer scrutiny its status proves 
to be complexly determined. 

The twofold aspect in regard to awareness of the 
motor impulse must be carefully distinguished : 
the return report of the action as performed, and 
the sense of initiative that accompanies the pro- 
cess at its inception. An awareness is normally 
attached to each factor, though in quite distinct 
manner. If the initiative proceeds in normal fash- 
ion, the awareness of the action as performed will 
under like normal condition naturally follow. An 
awareness of the performed movement with loss 
of the sense of initiative may quite readily occur 
within the range of the normal; and under unus- 
ual circumstances each may acquire a pronounced 
degree of independence of the other. Accordingly, 
their subsconscious status requires quite different 
formulae. The initiative embodies the specific 
moment of conscious action ; the sense of intention, 
the merging of deliberation into impulse, and the 
passage of impulse into execution beget a dis- 
tinctive type of feeling, and particularly, if there 
is operative some inhibition, some inner conflict 
of exhortation or suppression, whose purpose is 
to shape action to a wiser course, or to hold it in 
reserve for the psychologically fitting moment. 
Subconscious action is such as does not attain to, 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 451 

or has for the time remitted, this directive feature. 
Its formulation may be brief and precise : impulses 
that find their way to motor channels without the 
support, or with the feeble support, of this sense of 
initiative are subconscious. So distinctive is this 
type of action, and so definitely a motor affair, that 
the term subvoluntary seems far more precise. 
There is here attached to the feeling of awareness 
a special quality, that of permission, consent, sanc- 
tion, fiat; the sense of initiative is a " fiat " aware- 
ness. Formally, there may arise three types of 
subconscious action: the first, the lapse of initi- 
ative, but the subsequent awareness of the action 
through its performance; next, the converse rela- 
tion in which the initiative is present and felt, but 
the report of accomplishment omitted; and lastly, 
the running through of the action in complete 
subconsciousness without arousing the current of 
normal awareness at either end. The familiar 
motor lapses furnish the setting for each of these. 
The first appears in my sudden arrest by the 
clicking sound during the unintentional winding 
of my watch, when donning my evening clothes. 
In conformity to the last type, in which the en- 
tire action is lapsed, I may discover at the retir- 
ing hour that my watch is already wound, and 
conclude that I went through the process auto- 
matically while dressing for the evening, with 
only a suppressed awareness of both the inten- 



452 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tion and the action. 1 The second type appears 
as follows : if while undressing, my routine is 
interrupted, I may be beset with doubt as to 
whether I really have wound my watch, which I 
do ordinarily before removing my waistcoat. I am 
confident that as usual I intended to do so. If 
done, it was not unintentionally done ; and find- 
ing it wound, I conclude that the ordinary report 
of a duty accomplished has on this occasion been 
weakened to a subconscious status. In such cases 
the awareness need not completely disappear. 
Thus in the search for a misplaced article, I have 
a strong conviction that the thing was inten- 
tionally bestowed somewhere for safe-keeping; 
but the act was carelessly done, and has left an 
uncertain vestige ; yet I do not hesitate to assert 
that my willing self disposed of it in pursuit of 
a conscious initiative. Likewise the philosopher 
who did not know how many cups of tea he had 

1 To what measure this awareness comes through the feeling 
of contact, through the clicking sound, through the movement 
itself, may or may not be important. Movement frequently 
produces results that appeal to other senses, but is likewise dis- 
tinctive in itself. Darwin relates an incident in which a morbidly 
shy young man, responding to a toast proposed in his honor, 
went through his carefully rehearsed speech without giving ut- 
terance to a sound. He had the sense of innervating his own 
vocal apparatus in accordance with the articulation of his words ; 
but his mental perturbation interfered with his vocalizing the 
sounds, and also with the detection of this vital omission by his 
own hearing. The possibility of a lapse confined to one element of 
the motor response is thus neatly illustrated. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 453 

taken, knew very well that what he had enjoyed 
reached him through his own initiative ; and yet 
another of the guild, who sat down to read with 
a resolve not to nibble at the bunch of grapes 
on the table before him, remained seemingly ob- 
livious both of the temptation and the fall until 
the last grape was gone. Grape by grape, the 
initiative to extend the hand, take to the mouth, 
and swallow, as well as the report that such had 
been done, — all dropped to a subconscious level. 
Yet there remained a sufficient personal flavor 
of the whole to enable the partaker to acknow- 
ledge in dim retrospect the eating of the grapes 
as his own action. On the other hand, in the 
case of a common type of " automatic " writing, 
the subject is quite well aware that his hand is 
doing the writing, — both seeing it and feeling 
it move, — but the sense of initiative is wholly 
lacking ; it is not his writing, but the writing is 
going on through his motor apparatus by a force 
extraneous to his directive consciousness. We 
conclude accordingly that the general formula 
for subconscious procedure applies to the expres- 
sive factor in so far as the registry of what 
the muscles do, or of what happens to them, is 
concerned; for this is but a return form of 
awareness of a sensory type. But an individual 
status must be assigned to the specifically voli- 
tional factor, that finds its counterpart on the 



454 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

sensory side in the incorporative act, which is 
similarly a voluntary attitude of acceptance or 
sanction. 

The conscious relations of the motor procedure 
are worthy of further delineation from a somewhat 
different angle. The lowest type is that by nature 
removed from the consenting initiative ; for this, 
reflex action is the accepted term. When the ten- 
don below the knee-cap is struck, my foot jerks 
forward. I do not move it, I simply feel that it has 
moved. If an electric current is passed through 
the proper nerves, my eye-tooth is exposed by a 
raising of the upper lip. I know how it feels when 
I give a snarling expression to my face ; and thus 
I know that my muscles are so set, even though I 
have no sense of inducing this expression. Such 
actions go on by service of my neural dispositions, 
but without reference to my will. When any one 
creases rough paper between the finger-nails, it 
sets my teeth on edge ; and when I am over-tired 
with anxious work, my left eyelid twitches. I am 
very definitely aware of these feelings, and I 
am thus sensitive through some trick of my ner- 
vous system. But my initiative does not and can- 
not bring on the cold shivers or the fibrillar 
twitchings. Clearly, many forms of expression 
normally dispense with the contributory will-im- 
pulse. The converse relation presents the reten- 
tion of control over muscles that indeed obey 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 455 

the will, but return no report of their obedience. 
In such a condition — the consequence of special- 
ized lesion of the nervous system — a mother 
may be able to hold her child upon her arm so 
long as she visually takes charge thereof; but 
with her gaze directed elsewhere, the arm may 
relax and drop the child, and not inform its owner 
of any change of posture or diminution of effort. 
The visual support that in this abnormal instance 
regulates the movement, in ordinary cases con- 
tributes an essential factor to the composite guid- 
ance ; for the skill of the hand reaches its highest 
expertness under visual training, just as similarly 
the accuracy of the voice is determined by the 
sensitiveness of the ear. In consequence of this 
double regulation, the failure of the one guid- 
ing mechanism does not debar the action, but 
throws the dependence upon the other guidance. 
In such manner my muscles have incidentally 
learned to write; and I can write (with loss of 
skill and precision) with eyes closed, and could 
with proper devices continue to do so if I were to 
become blind. Those who lose hearing continue 
to speak by service of the incidentally trained 
muscles of the vocal mechanism. These precise 
and organic relations of dependence and unfold- 
ment are important, as well for the comprehen- 
sion of how normally we command the machinery 
of our conscious expression, as for the manner in 



456 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

which this efficiency continues subconsciously in 
normal and in abnormal procedure. 1 

The sense of initiative may well be regarded as 
the most enduring, most elemental expression of 
our individuality. When we yield this, we give 
ourselves over to that other world of personal 
loss, the idle drift of Nirvana, the soulless auto- 
matism, the irresponsible realm of dreams. Ac- 
cordingly, within the normal range, subvoluntary 
action is ordinarily limited to quite transient 
abstractions, — short but deep gaps of orientation, 
— during which the momentum of an initiative 
already installed is continued ; or, favored by the 
natural solicitations of an appeal sufficiently sim- 
ple and familiar to find subconscious access, the 

1 Of special interest in this connection are the movements 
concerned in the expression of the emotions. These probably are 
enlisted for such service by the very fact that they represent but 
the slighter and derivative by-products of more urgent economies. 
Quite bluntly stated, the dog's tail becomes a sensitive measure of 
his joy and dejection, because that organ is not involved in more 
vital service. Similarly, the highways of emotional expression 
have close physiological affiliations, are neither capricious nor me- 
chanical, and are subject to voluntary interference. The blushing 
of shame, the reddening of anger, the frowning of perplexity, the 
clinching of teeth and hand in anguish, the more subtle expres- 
sions of a sense of guilt or of offended vanity, present variable 
relations to the realm of control. Affectation may conceal as 
well as summon such expression, though ordinarily with slight or 
pronounced deviation from the realism of the actual emotion. The 
exalted control or spontaneous appearance of these expressions in 
abnormal conditions of lapsed initiative is peculiarly significant, 
and both have been used as tests of the genuineness of such states. 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 457 

response takes place under like inattentive atti- 
tude. To this type conform the great body of 
lapses and confusions that make up every ordinary 
collection of absent-minded doings; they are 
quickly detected, oftenest by the return sensa- 
tion of their wrong accomplishment, or by similar 
sensory warning ; they are momentary waverings 
of control by which actions are attracted into 
channels held invitingly open by familiar routine 
or by the suggestive appeal of a patent situation, 
instead of finding issue by plan and intention. 
Normal fluctuations in this respect will not be 
particularly pronounced, because the initiative is 
the natural point of concentration of the mental 
progression, and is not readily involved in the 
minor ebb and flow. To disturb this feeling" 
requires deeper and more massive disturbances, 
more serious departure from waking alertness of 
response. 

Interesting in this respect is the relative posi- 
tion that the contributory and consummating 
movements of the mind occupy in the temporal 
apportioning of our mental doings. Acquisition 
and elaboration are by nature prolonged, pre- 
paratory, reflective, incubational procedures that 
are maintained through the larger spans of our 
mental occupation. We read and think, listen 
and look by the hour, and demand some light 
and shifting appeal of this kind to afford recrea- 



458 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

tion from the weightier concerns of professional 
activity. Efficiency, however, is the reserve test 
of preparation ; and we are properly suspicious of 
prolonged periods of passive absorption without 
the frequent stimulus of practical response. There 
is a natural tendency to dwell yet a while in the 
receptive stage and postpone the day of action. 
We realize that effort lies in this consummating 
step. It is when our turn comes to speak and 
write and act that strain begins, conscious forces 
are marshaled, and the cumulative issues of long 
training are put to the final test. Convention 
solves many of our problems ; complacency is 
convenient ; routine is restful. Initiative calls for 
a more strenuous quality, and particularly in the 
field of mental construction demands the sterner 
efforts, the higher energetic alertness of the mind. 
The captain's attitude on board ship is quite dif- 
ferent from that of a passenger : nor is this dif- 
ference confined to the hours of his watch, nor 
to the moment of his giving orders ; the entire 
background of his occupation, night and day, is 
tinged by the underlying currents of responsi- 
bility, — tensions of duty, that hold him ever ready 
for the crisis of action. It is through such inter- 
pretation that character becomes the expression 
of will, and that normal responsibility is gauged 
by the integrity of the sense of initiative as well 
as by the comprehension of the intent of one's 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 459 

acts, — a conclusion that once more discloses how 
intimately initiative merges into a phase of per- 
sonality. 

To complete our interpretative survey, the sev- 
eral considerations may be converged upon the 
personal aspects of conduct. The most elemental 
provision for this phase of the psychic response is 
recognized in the formula by the presence of the 
favoring attitude ; this, but slightly relevant in 
the simplest procedures, becomes ever more com- 
manding, until in the highest achievements we 
require at once the persistent incentive of earnest 
purpose and the happy support of mood and con- 
dition. There is a large and variable implication 
in the bare fact that the tissue is alive, the mind 
alert. Through the development of such impli- 
cations, conduct becomes expressive of something 
more than the play of objective forces upon an 
impressionable material; it reflects the individual 
responsive quality of the organism. The further- 
ing attitude of such responsiveness leads directly 
to the personal quality of the developed mental 
procedure. We have to deal not with the imper- 
sonal fact that the eyes have impressed upon them 
certain orderly stimulations of form and color, but 
that / see ; it is not that there are contractions 
of muscles going on in the hand, but that / am 
moving my finger. By definiteness of content and 
systematic interpretation in the first procedures, 



460 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

and by the direction of consistent purpose in the 
second operation, the process is elevated to a place 
in the personal scale, is given a standing in con- 
scious conduct. 

Such awareness does not emerge as a bare sense 
of impressionability and a feeling of action ; the 
most primary aspect of the procedure is the 
accompanying emotional tinge that goes out to 
the impression, and imparts deep significance to 
movements. "Expression" refers as naturally 
to the emotional flavor of our speech as to the rea- 
soned meaning of the words. Acquisition awaits 
the motive force of interest, — a procedure that 
reflects something of the emotional warmth. Our 
mental processes are not those of a thinking 
machine, but are curiously warped, in spite of 
cherished ideals and stern training, by the subtle- 
ties of personal advantage and esteem ; and the 
expressions of our complex individuality are woven 
through and through with the prejudices of our 
experience, the superstitions of our fears, the dis- 
tortions of our desires. The personal life viewed 
by and large is the emotional life, that furnishes 
the deeper well-spring of our being. A flattering 
phrase, a disdainful word, a glorious vista, the 
sound of distant music borne on " the stilly night," 
an interesting "find," affect my consciousness 
deeply ; and I tingle with the pleasure of the com- 
pliment, the smart of the insult, the aesthetic thrill, 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 461 

the tender appeal, or the glow of discovery. My 
words, responsive to these situations, reveal my 
excited elation or my depression, my sympathy or 
my enthusiasm. Familiar as all this is, it is likely 
to fall out of notice in our close attention to the 
reflective and active aspects of the psychic life. 
Its profound importance at the present juncture 
lies in the fact that the emotional accompaniment 
of thought and conduct contributes so richly to 
the personal essence of experience ; and hence that 
fluctuations of the emotional quality of the wave 
involve the deeper mutations of the self. The 
emotional life is equally continuous with the intel- 
lectual ; the changes of feeling-tone impart as 
characteristic quality to the general undercurrents 
of the stream as do the minor objective and sub- 
jective occupations of the self. It is because out 
of these currents emerges the specific character 
of our conscious activities, reflecting so subtly 
yet effectively the qualities of their source ; and 
because this massive substratum, which we find 
so deeply saturated with emotional elements, 
serves as the basis for the special trends of con- 
scious progression ; and finally for the further 
reason that this emotional suffusion carries with 
it the intimate flavor of personal welfare, that 
the emotional fluctuations stand as integral and 
pervasive influences of subconscious participa- 
tion. 



462 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

We seem thus able to account for the dual con- 
stitution of each moment of personal conscious- 
ness. Conformably to the general conception, the 
self-feeling of the moment will be constituted by 
the special form and direction of the dominant 
awareness, reared upon the general massive, ever- 
present composite of influences that determine the 
underlying tensions and relations of organic dis- 
positions. I have large generic self-feelings from 
which I do not wholly escape by refuge in the 
specific absorption of a conscious pursuit. Not 
alone is the success of my morning's writing de- 
pendent upon the soundness of my night's sleep, 
the proper digestion of my breakfast, the absence 
of household cares, or of disquieting news in the 
morning's mail, or of other undercurrents of con- 
cern, the leisure of a free period undisturbed by 
interfering obligations ; but it is equally depend- 
ent upon my long-incubated preparation for the 
work, upon years of special interest, months of 
note-taking reading, the general trend of my 
views of life and mind, to say nothing of such 
practical spurs as that I must make progress to 
satisfy my ideals or the publisher's appeal for 
more copy. I can never get away from the en- 
during sense of personal continuous development 
and identity that forms the background of my 
special activity, however that may be directed. It 
is accordingly because of the complexity of factors 



THE CONCEPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 463 

that enter into the self -feelings, independently 
of the incorporation and initiative of special oc- 
cupations, that it requires more organic lapses 
to invade the field of self-consciousness. Such 
invasions belong to the abnormal rather than to 
the normal varieties of subconscious procedure. 



II 

THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 

The conception of subconscious function, framed 
primarily with reference to its fundamental and 
serviceable role in the psychology of the normal 
consciousness, is now to be applied to the ab- 
normal field. The standard of mental procedure 
may be said to involve a normal individual acting 
in a normal state of mind. The diversities of 
temperament representing variations of degree of 
dependence upon subconscious participation enter 
familiarly into the psychologist's range of inter- 
ests. When sharply differentiated, these present 
an exaggerated dependence upon and command of 
procedures that thrive as the more implicit and 
feebly articulate activities of the psychic life ; and 
in the opposite type present an unusual immu- 
nity from such reliance and the consequent fully 
alert and circumspect habit of behavior under the 
high lights of explicit consciousness. We draw, 
after our several manners, upon subconsciously 
matured resources in support of deliberately 
constructive efforts, of definitely set problems, 
or of less strenuous yet purposeful endeavor, all 
in fair conformity to the normal procedure, and 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 465 

with variable success. There is an irregular se- 
quence of fat and lean, of unanticipated fertility 
and disappointing failure, of crops modest but 
reliable and others more uncertain. In regard to 
the average yield and the slighter shortages and 
profusions — the middle registers of deviation from 
the normal — we are not over-curious. We have 
come to accept the diversities of minds and the 
fluctuations and limitations of our own mental 
instrument as a familiar lot in the natural order 
of things ; to realize resignedly to what extent 
our individual gait in its ordinary excursions, and 
in its occasional more ambitious flights, leans upon 
favoring mood or the pressure of circumstance, 
with what temperamental dependence we await 
or encourage the auspicious conjunction of quite 
mundane influences to bring to fruitage what we 
feel that our estate has the possibility to bear ; or 
in more homely phrase, how reliably the domestic 
nag suits his pace to our interests, and submits to 
bridle and spur, — a discipline that we might hesi- 
tate to apply to a more high-spirited Pegasus. 
Marked immunity from such dependence char- 
acterizes a type of mind that conducts soberly 
and circumspectly its step-by-step advance ; such 
steadiness of gait, well-regulated command of 
accumulated detail, neatly pigeon-holed availabil- 
ity of resources, clear logical working of trained 
facilities, fit their possessors for tasks of great 



466 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

practical utility, and not improbably for enter- 
prises vast and complex, which for the most part 
is what the world requires and rewards. Such 
a reliable flow from a steadily fed spring, with 
slight dependence upon occasional spurts from 
more uncertain sources, suggests a matter-of-fact, 
not over-sensitive temperament, whose fluctua- 
tions seem well controlled and rarely extend be- 
yond predictable limits, — a mind that bears stead- 
fastly to outlined purpose with no unnecessary 
soaring to higher realms for wider outlook, and 
not much loitering by the way. It suggests a 
temperament, — clearly not a deficiency, — and for 
many lines of endeavor, indeed, a favoring talent; 
it suggests, moreover, a mature, sedate, adjusted 
type of procedure that has outgrown, so far as it 
may have ever deeply experienced it, the storm- 
and-stress unsettlement of youth — and finds ex- 
pression in manifold grades and shades among 
all sorts and conditions of men. 

The notably emphasized dependence upon sub- 
conscious facilitation is naturally more interesting 
to our theme, and presents, by contrasted deepen- 
ing of shadows and raising of the high lights again, 
a temperament, an individually characteristic mode 
of bringing forth, under massively complex influ- 
ences, the special issues of our several talents. The 
larger and deeper fluctuations, the more vivid 
imaginings, the more intensive responsiveness to 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 467 

mood and condition, the readier falling back upon 
inner and vaguely sensed relations, the acutely- 
developed impressionism of appreciation and judg- 
ment, the youthfully tempered and emotionally 
guided striving for the higher ranges of achieve- 
ment, — all these other halves of the conditions 
for successful endeavor may be developed to the 
disparagement of their contrasting counterparts, 
and thus mould a mind to exaggerated, and yet 
■withal normal dependence upon those undercur- 
rents of resource and dispositions of temper that 
have been shown to constitute the groundwork for 
subconscious facilitation. We appreciate, more- 
over, that the mental realm within which such 
susceptibility to sympathy of mood and to the 
oscillations, even the caprices, of a high-strung 
disposition is most characteristically displayed, is 
that of the emotionally prompted and imaginative 
phases of our being. The greater dependence upon 
favoring moments, in occupations that unfold 
the inner harmonies of the sentimental life ; the 
greater need of "inspiration" in composition that 
proceeds by fancy rather than by logic, by deeper 
drafts upon the undercurrents of sensibility, that 
only in the master spirit become articulate ; — ■ 
all this suggests the temperament in high or low 
degree, that relies largely upon the deeper re- 
sources of a sensitive nature, that readily forsakes 
effort for intuition, at times building far better 



468 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

than it knows how, at times obstinately unpro- 
gressive. 

The poet, the dramatist, the artist, the musician, 
and many another devotee of the muses are in 
this aspect of a nature all compact ; yet the com- 
mon emotional source of their creations, though 
intimately characteristic, should not be construed 
to exclude logical procedures from such depend- 
ence. On the contrary, these reasoned types of 
specialized facilitation are enlightening in that 
they serve to verify circumstantially the subcon- 
scious procedures upon which the talent depends. 
The chess-playing, memorizing, and computing 
prodigies present the most notable instances of 
such talent. While our knowledge of the methods 
of these virtuosi is quite defective, — and the 
performers themselves conduct their operations so 
subconsciously as to contribute little to our en- 
lightenment, — it may be plausibly maintained 
that the amazing proficiency of these prodigies 
is built up upon a native disposition, upon a pro- 
nounced vividness of sense-imagery, and upon 
an extensive command of familiarized material. 
Arithmetical prodigies, along with painters, poets, 
and writers, are apt to project a situation in a 
brilliant visual image, as remarkable for the scope 
and complexity of details as for its accuracy and 
ready command. They see as on imaginary black- 
boards, or like the fleeting exposure of a picture 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 469 

thrown upon the screen, the partial resultant of 
their complex calculations. With closed eyes and 
a strained inner vision, they build up their construc- 
tions with large inclusive spans of procedure, so 
suppressedly reasoned that results seem to follow 
upon premises by some prompted insight, and equa- 
tions yield their solution as in a flash. By extensive 
and intimately familiarized material held ever ready 
for service ; by passionate and incessant devotion to 
figures ; by ceaseless rumination over primes and 
squares and roots and products ; by facile devis- 
ing of short-cut procedures that bring result close 
to premise, there is acquired a great mass of " un- 
derstudied" material, mental tables of predigested 
results, in the manipulation of which formulated 
procedures come to play a decreasing part. The 
planning and the sectional construction are, in 
the main, consciously directed and consummated, 
and are supported at every stage by the minor 
operations facilitated to the point of mechanical 
automatism, and filling in the niches of the con- 
struction as fast as they arise. Moreover, effort 
accompanies the task, and in some fair proportion 
to its unfamiliarity and intrinsic difficulty ; in 
brief, the result, however notable, maintains an 
intelligible relation to the normal type of ante- 
cedents, and may thus be included within the 
instances of exalted facilitation dependent alike 
upon temperament and cultivation. 



470 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

The process of " crystal gazing," though a less 
deliberately cultivated talent, equally depends upon 
a vivid supporting imagery, in conjunction with 
a peculiarity of favoring disposition. 1 Such pro- 
jections appear not under constant control, but 
are facilitated by effort, and seem to find their 
favored material in just those incidents that are 
received in the indirect field of mental atten- 
tion. The process also demands an attitude of 
withdrawal from ordinary solicitations, that fur- 
thers the emergence of subconscious impressions. 

Abnormal psychology finds its material in 
deviating states, presenting in their composition 
a departure in degree or nature of the component 
factors of the normal attitude. The significant 
deviations extend towards the pronounced lower- 
ing of such purpose in the idler drifting of revery, 
and again, in the opposite direction towards the 
sharpened concentration of effort upon a unified 
endeavor, which in turn may take the form of an 
objective occupation or of an inner thought-con- 
struction. It is not unnatural that superficially 
the two attitudes bear sufficient resemblance to be 
included under a common name. Both are varie- 
ties of abstraction ; which term derives its perti- 
nence from the fact that what the mind draws 
away from is the general appeal of miscellaneous 
solicitation : what remains undecided is how far the 

i A reference to pages 102-107 will be helpful. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 471 

motive of the withdrawal suggests the luminous 
energy of the focused sunbeam, or the nebulous 
dispersion of a misty atmosphere. More signifi- 
cant than the mere fact of seclusion is the manner 
of occupation of the cloistered soul. The extreme 
over-intentness of effort may reach the phase of 
rapt ecstasy, a complete absorption in ideal con- 
templation, the issue of which, if not too passively 
conducted, may be the inception of a notable crea- 
tive effort, a supreme concentration of a mind 
saturated with a definite purpose upon the solution 
of a long-cherished issue. The "brown-study," 
"wool-gathering" period of vacancy is a very 
different blending of the tints — though possibly 
selected from the same portions of the spectrum 
— that brings the " abstracted " subject near to 
the realm of dreams. Yet the wavelike character 
of the most intense, as of aimless occupation, pro- 
vides for " troughs " of recedence preparatory to 
" crests " of advance, — a refreshening of energy, as 
it were, by a plunge into the subconscious stream. 1 

1 In a suggestive essay Dr. Georg Hirth proposes the query 
"Warum sind wir zerstreut?" (1895), and pertinently remarks 
that there are two kinds of " Zerstreutheit : " the absent-minded- 
ness of the professor (Gelekrten-Zerstreutheit) is the insensitiveness, 
through inner absorption, to practical appeals ; the absent-minded- 
ness or distractibility of the pupil (Schiiler-Zerstreutheit) represents 
a converse type, in which every trivial objective solicitation with- 
draws the slender attention from its task. Dr. Hirth, waiving the 
implication of the context, adds that monkeys seem to pass the 
whole of their lives in just such distraction-welcoming occupations. 



472 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

When we abandon the normal attitude and 
are faced dreamward, we meet the obligation — 
already absolved — of appraising the quality of 
the transformed perspective of the new vista, 
and again of tracing more analytically the devel- 
opment by which the ensuing stage acquires its 
differentiating traits. For such purpose we may 
profitably recall the transitional feeling to which 
we yield when we invite revery, and float with 
the stream. What ensues in this " letting-go " 
period is the fading away of the outer world 
under a release of active tension, a dismissal of 
responsibilities, a passive acceptance, even a cal- 
lous unconcern towards what may come, a sur- 
cease of energy, the end-of-day attitude of slip- 
pered ease in a drowsy revery by the fireside. 
Important in this transformation, in its larger 
features as in detail, is the fluctuation of debits 
and credits upon the two sides of the ledger ; 
what is plus in the one field is minus in the other. 
Accordingly, the time and place and circumstance 
of revery are chosen to diminish or dismiss the 
appeal of outward stimuli : the gathering dusk, 
the calm of solitude, the soothing familiarity of 
surroundings, a restful quiet, or at most the mo- 
notonous tick of a clock, that marks time yet car- 
ries no message that needs decipherment. These 
negative dispositions release the mind for inner 
promptings and bring forward the undercurrents 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 473 

of concern. Presumably, a similar reversal within 
the sensory field becomes notable ; and as outer 
attention fades, the organic feelings take posses- 
sion. They may color the mood of our medita- 
tions, and if positive in tone, direct the currents 
of thought. Indisposition similarly asserts itself ; 
a headache, that is struggled against and kept 
down during hours of duty, throbs with renewed 
agony as we at last yield to its urgency. The 
feel of our body and the fluctuations of its con- 
dition surge up more distinctly as we dismiss the 
outer world ; and their presentative dominance fur- 
nishes an ingredient in the stuff that dreams are 
made of. As the outer worldliness of occupation 
withdraws, the inner regrets, disappointments, 
forebodings, that we escape in active absorption, 
return. For we drown our cares in work or recrea- 
tion ; and the chief rivals of purposive occupation 
— at times most troublesome to dismiss — are 
these same distractions of the environment and 
the cares or interests of personal concern ; with 
the abeyance of conscious direction, these refused 
claimants push forward and fill the forum of the 
inner life. Revery, which is in part the reinstate- 
ment of the subconsciously sustained and con- 
sciously restrained interests, in part the refreshen- 
ing or compensation for our sterner moments, 
mingles with the trends of the mental progression, 
whose deposits of associative material it builds 



474 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

upon, but puts to new uses, and changes the 
values of whatever it touches. 1 In such change 
the dominance of the emotional promptings — 
ever deeper and less explicit than conscious ex- 
pression — may give the keynote to the musings. 
The laying bare and the moral accounting of 
our motives seek their confessional hour when 
the breadwinning activities are dismissed ; and 
the night-thoughts take on their reflective, re- 
pentant, resolute, yearning, or prospecting mood. 
Long before we sleep are our minds attuned to 
dreams. 

In dreamlike states the waves of strenuous 
activity recede ; and the ensuing calm is broken 
only by an occasional gust, bringing back, as by 
a veering wind, the currents of the day's occupa- 
tions. Such change of conditions involves three 
aspects: the activity of the sensory dispositions, of 
the associative procedures, and of the modes of 
response. The formula for the dream of ordinary 
sleep presents a simple combination of values ; the 
outward sensory dispositions are so nearly hushed 
that their direct contribution is but occasional ; 
the bodily sensations at times reach a preponder- 
ant influence, but as a rule are not as determina- 
tive of the issue as the elaborative procedures that 

1 It is needless to carry out this relation in detail, as the 
dreams themselves so clearly disclose them. The pertinent analy- 
ses will be found on pages 177-180, 211-214, and 219-251. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 475 

weave the slender incidents into a fantastic tale ; 
in normal dreaming we are quiescent, with senses 
and muscles both inactive, with eyes only for the 
stage of the mental theatre. Yet any inclination 
to regard all dreaming as thus passive, introspec- 
tive, unrestrainedly imaginative, will at once be 
dismissed when we regard the variants of dream- 
states. In these the values and relations of the 
three components may be moderately or decidedly 
altered. Ordinarily, the transition from dreams to 
waking restores all three of the mental activities 
to the normal status : as the dream-thread snaps, 
we find our place in the waking world ; we are alert 
to our surroundings, take charge of our directive 
opportunities, and resume life under the dominant 
interests of our composite nature. The opening 
of the eyes is so intimately associated with this 
transition that we should regard it as quite abnor- 
mal for the distinctive movement of dreams to 
continue after the curtain is raised upon the world 
without; or that the individual, thus coming into 
possession of his own, should fail to take advan- 
tage of his privileges. Yet transitional dreamlike 
states — possibly but moderate deviations from 
ordinary dreaming — exhibit some encroachment 
of the one field upon the other. In such incom- 
plete wakefulness there may appear the play of 
the waking directive mood upon the dream-con- 
tent, or of the dream-manner upon the material 



476 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

presented to the waking senses. 1 The dream-trend 
for a little continues in the real world ; or the 
dreamer, now awake, sees pictorially projected into 
space the construction of his dream-vision, or 
hears, as if borne on outer air, the voices that 
spoke to him in dreams. 

A quite different departure from the standard 
formula of dreams, and naturally with some re- 
sumption of waking characteristics, appears in the 
somnambulistic or active dream, 2 as well as in 
delirium, and through the agency of the differen- 
tial chemistry of the psychic poisons, as they play 
so subtly upon the finer elements of the brain's 
structure. In somnambulism the eyes may open 
and yet not arouse the directive consciousness, or 
arouse it so feebly, so partially, that only the more 
automatic facilities, well schooled to humbler ser- 
vice, are enlisted in the dream-imposed quest. The 
elaborative procedures are clearly no longer those 
of revery, but have shifted more nearly to the 
opposite type, — of concentrated purpose; and 
the whole becomes suggestive of the hypnotic 
state, which the formula more naturally reaches 
from the opposite direction. In other words, if 

1 This formula becomes variously applicable to the group of 
incidents recounted on pages 182-187, 223-230, and 235-237. 

2 The simplest form of active dream is that in which the nat- 
ural accompaniments of thought or emotion break over into expres- 
sion. Such incipient somnambulisms appear in incidents scattered 
throughout the section : pages 222-265. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 477 

the natural accidents add active possibilities to a 
dream-state and yet leave the dreamer asleep, there 
is somnambulism ; and if by an artificial interfer- 
ence, we curtail the possibilities of waking control 
without involving the complete disqualification of 
sleep, we have induced hypnosis. The two result- 
ing states, though retaining differential traits, have 
thus approached and met upon common ground. 

Similarly, whether the condition aroused by 
opium, hasheesh, mescal, alcohol, nitrous-oxide, or 
ether shall best be described as a waking state, 
disqualified from its full measure of normal scope, 
or as a dream-state that does not involve the com- 
plete transformation characteristic of the dreams of 
ordinary sleep, is an issue to be differently deter- 
mined in each instance. The anaesthetics quickly 
take one into sleep and beyond the realm of 
dreams ; but in their onset, and as the incapacity 
lifts, dreams arise displaying the typical mental 
movements, the sources of motif within and with- 
out, the manner of their embellishment, — all in 
accord with the formula of dream-revery. The 
automatic stage may appear in the transition to 
full awakening, and the senses be aroused, and 
significant movements and speech be available, 
while yet the personal allegiance is to the dream- 
world. 1 Delirium offers a related status of domi- 

1 Such cases are given on pages 242 and 244, and related ones 
on pages 238-245. 



478 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

nance of subjective fancies in a troubled sleep, 
giving way at intervals to wakefulness, into which 
the imaginative creations are projected as hal- 
lucinations, that may lead to speech or action in 
pursuit of a dream-imposed quest or in recoil 
from impending calamity. The victim of alco- 
holic delirium lives much nearer to wakefulness, 
if not actually in it; his delusions give strange 
distortions to the actual objects of his visions, 
though in part they are not objective at all, but 
mere projections of an excited brain 1 acting with 
impaired control and incoherence. The opium 
dream may present the entire range of transition 
from waking orientation to capricious revery. 
There may ensue long periods in which, as soon 
as the eyes close, phantoms appear and play their 
parts in confusing transformations, to be dispelled 
instantly by occupation in objective interests. In 
other cases, the hallucinations work their charms 
upon the environment to which, as most character- 
istically in the mescal intoxication, the subject 
remains rationally responsive. He observes and 
records the successive transformations of the wall- 

1 The description at once recalls the phenomena of actual in- 
sanity; for certain of the oppressions clearly invade the waking 
hours, project their hallucinations into the living world, impose 
delusions, imperative ideas, and incoherent trains of thought, im- 
pair the will, and drive the impulses to irresistible actions, thus 
wrecking the self or disabling it so long as the tyranny endures. 
The same considerations have aroused the comment that if we 
were to act out and credit our dreams, we should be rated insane. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 479 

paper patterns, or the colored effulgence of dull 
familiar objects, appreciating well, though possibly 
with some alarm, that it is all a trick of his poi- 
soned brain-cells, despite which he retains fair con- 
trol over his reflective processes and the organs 
of his will. In yet other stages the opium-eater is 
more asleep than awake; and the dream-reveries, 
though persistent and recurrent in theme and 
of one pervasive mood (like those of the delirium 
of fever), are unmistakably reveries with little 
projection into or intrusion from the outer world. 
The altered values of perceptive, elaborative, and 
active factors in these deliriant and intoxicant 
states thus run the gamut of excess and defect, 
combining in versatile permutations the several 
characteristics of the waking and of the dream- 
ing self. 1 

In following the outlined plan of presentation, 
the relations of states of abnormal concentration 
should be next surveyed. It will, however, be 
more helpful to indicate at once the common con- 
ception to which the varieties of mental abeyance 
as well as of distorted waking conform. Such a 
principle is found in dissociation, which refers to 
the partial presence, with impaired relations, of 
factors normally fully associated and integrally 
coordinated. In this view, dreaming itself is but 

1 The descriptions most pertinent to the phenomena thus referred 
to are to be found on pages 237-244 and 252-262. 



480 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

a phase of such dissociation, characterized by 
dominance of inwardly prompted elaboration and 
feebly responsive perception, along with quiescence 
of the active will and closure of outward senses. 
Dreamless sleep would represent the more com- 
plete abeyance, — with sense and thought and 
will, all suspended, or as nearly so as the depth of 
sleep permits ; while dreaming, true to its connec- 
tion with the lighter moments of sleep, is already 
partial wakefulness. As on the one side there is 
abeyance, there is on the other special excitation 
that resists sleep and stirs the brain to activities 
beyond the natural vigor, or forces upon it per- 
ceptions, thoughts, and impulses which it imper- 
fectly resists. The mingling of dream-revery with 
waking construction, and the imposed disturbances 
of excitement, appear in the varieties of drug-in- 
toxication ; such states again represent dissociated 
procedures, that combine in abnormal manner par- 
tial loss with partial retention ; dream-projection 
persists in clear vision, dream-sequences intrude 
upon waking life ; or the dreamer regains in part 
the power of action without full orientation, or 
is haunted as he moves in the one world by the 
spectral inhabitants of the other. Finally, there 
is intimately characteristic of the conscious life the 
distinctive factor of directive action, of an adjusted 
attention, of a logically regulative procedure ; 
while similarly characteristic of subconscious par- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 481 

ticipation or dominance is a mental progression 
whose close affiliations are to the more spontane- 
ous, unrestrained, inward dispositions, that appear 
most independently when their powerful rivals in 
the psychic life are in abeyance. In the light 
of such contrast, the allegiances of dreams and 
of waking help to determine the boundaries of the 
conscious and the subconscious domain. 

The acceptance of dissociation as an explana- 
tory principle incurs the obligation of defending 
its pertinence and of developing its theoretical 
status. To this end an intimate survey of the 
implications of normal experience and a return 
to certain fundamental analyses are alike neces- 
sary. The standard procedure — that of a normal 
individual active in a normal state — implies an 
environment, in adjustment to which such activ- 
ity is conducted. The waves of stimulation and 
response as they surge through the nervous 
system set up a train of concomitant sequences, 
the nature of which is revealed only to an inner 
observation. The full complement of "privileges" 
which a developed conscious procedure entails, 
may be grouped about three central phases: the 
first, a subjective orientation by virtue of which 
the wave finds a place within the organic system 
along with other waves and their reactions upon 
the common stream ; the second, an objective ori- 
entation, through which it gets a setting in con- 



482 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

dition and circumstance; the third, the intrinsic 
energy that imparts to it the distinction of being 
a wave. A supplementary illustration may be 
helpful : A festive procession of vehicles passes 
along an avenue lined with houses and trees; 
at a given moment a certain one crosses the field 
of vision and thus occupies the foreground, and 
does so as a member of a series ; its motion is 
relative to and is projected against the stationary 
background of houses and trees ; and its motive 
power is efficiently at work to carry it along. 
When a mental movement takes place, it involves 
a definite content in the foreground, that in 
turn is but an incident in a procession, involves 
secondly a background in relation to which the 
movement finds its bearings, and finally, an effec- 
tive impulse to maintain and direct the progress. 
These implications when thus simply and objec- 
tively reduced, are obvious ; but when translated 
into the intricacies of the organic life of the mind, 
their more complex embodiment is by no means 
easy to decipher ; and the difficulty is inherent 
above all in the distinctive feature thereof, by 
virtue of which the whole becomes a conscious 
procedure ; for it is the privilege of the psychic 
experience to arouse a realization of its place in a 
series, and of the background that it is passing, 
and of the fact that it is moving : such realization 
involves the conception of a conscious self. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 483 

For definiteness of reference, I speak of the 
three " privileges " of the mature psychic proced- 
ure as incorporation, orientation, and initiative. 
Accordingly, the present movement of my pen in 
writing (in addition to the content, import, and 
form of the result) is something of which I am 
amply aware as it proceeds, and not as a detached 
act, but as complexly bound up with the evolution 
by which my individual self with all its accumu- 
lated experience has reached this particular junc- 
ture : further, the writing is going on in familiar 
surroundings to which I retain an undercurrent 
of adjustment, and is adjusted also in a time- 
series in which objective events intricately enter ; 
and in turn I am aware that I must maintain 
my thought and my hand in fitting energy to keep 
the pen agoing. Thus the fully privileged con- 
scious act involves not alone the specifically defin- 
ing content in terms of direct receptive processes, 
and concrete associative affiliations, and the avail- 
ability of muscular channels ; but its status implies 
the infusion of a certain quality of bearing into 
what these components furnish ; and this over- 
laying envelope is the integrating consummation 
that gives to the whole its standing in the psychic 
life. Incorporation, orientation, and initiative are 
subject to the fluctuations that beset all phases 
of the mental movement ; their presence varies 
in terms of intimacy of the relations that they 



484 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

establish, and above all in explicitness. But 
however feebly availed of in the actual procedure, 
the fact that the privileges of such incorpora- 
tion, orientation, and initiative remain open, and 
that the act and its setting may instantly be 
acknowledged as one's own, and be given a local 
habitation and a name, stamp the movement as nor- 
mal and integral. In the slighter deviations, a 
momentary confusion, the need of wider alertness, 
may intervene before the privilege is rendered 
available ; in the more serious ones, a real change 
of state ; while in the most involved abnormalities, 
the privilege is regained but intermittently and 
upon the basis of strenuous reconstruction. The 
formula of dissociation thus refers to conditions 
in which waves flow through the nervous system, 
arousing handicapped types of sensibility and 
responsiveness, but are deprived in various man- 
ner of their normal associative privileges. Sensi- 
bility is present, but in certain areas does not 
achieve normal incorporation ; the outer world 
makes its appeal, but orientation to it is defective 
and liable to lapse and distortion by subjective 
intrusions; the muscular contractions combine 
in significant conduct, but the initiative of a per- 
sonal guidance is weakened or suspended. The 
fact that a selective range of activities continues, 
proves to what extent there is retention of organ- 
ized functions ; the fact that such activities are 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 485 

debarred from the full measure of their normal 
implications, indicates the manner of loss that is 
entailed. And inasmuch as any change of status 
in the personal quality of conduct — by partial 
detachment of a wave from the stream — reflects 
upon the specific manner of its flow, it follows 
that the disintegration of a dissociated state affects 
at once the receptive, elaborative, and expressive 
content of conduct, — its formal progressive steps, 
■ — and concomitantly, the privileges of normal 
affiliations with the unifying achievements of a 
developing mind. From such generic basis, the 
specific types of retained but handicapped func- 
tions, and equally the relations of the curtailments 
or losses, must be consistently derived. 

An impairment of the incorporative privilege 
implies a state of mind in which the psychic move- 
ment persists, but without attaining normal ac- 
knowledgment. Though we recognize how selec- 
tive is the incorporative activity, — for we absorb 
but a fraction of the varieties of stimulation by 
which we are incessantly assailed, — yet a pro- 
nounced disqualification of this natural privilege, 
a notable restriction in this particular, clearly can 
no longer be regarded as a normal mental attitude. 
Anaesthesia is the practical symbol of such loss, 
yet not primarily of the physiological variety 
involving deeper injury to brain-cells, but of psy- 
chic exclusion through an abnormal attitude, — an 



486 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

exclusion always selective and partial, and signifi- 
cant by the contrast of what it retains and what 
it rejects, as well as by the manner thereof. Total 
anaesthesia implying a nearly complete depression 
of the mental wave is not psychologically instruc- 
tive. To render a man sense-less by making him 
equally thought-less and will-less seems a natural 
issue of a serious disqualification ; for we meet it 
in stupor, in fainting, in the shock of a blow upon 
the head, in the overpowering by chloroform ; and 
though we may not wholly understand why this 
ensues, it is sufficient for our present purpose to 
appreciate that our brain-cells are so disposed that 
their activity may be thus suspended. In psychic 
anaesthesia we are called upon to recognize a dis- 
qualification of more partial character, and yet 
inherently of no more mysterious nature ; here 
the wave courses through the nervous system, but 
without establishing as it goes those ramifying 
consequents, concomitant issues, — or however 
we choose to picture the process, — that give rise 
to conscious incorporation, but are yet registered, 
as we have seen, by some lower or detached type 
of procedure. 

Psychic anaesthesia finds its simplest embodiment 
in the restriction of the field resulting from pro- 
nounced abstraction ; and this again is either a 
more general exclusion of all but the one focused 
area, — such as the thinker immersed in his prob- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 487 

lem and oblivious of all else, — or is of a more 
specialized type, — such as the individual whose 
conviction that he has forgotten his umbrella is 
so unquestioned that he fails to perceive the 
article securely held under his arm. Such lapses 

— partial or miniature failures of incorporation of 
impressions that attain a lower order of response 

— we have abundantly reviewed. The psychic an- 
aesthesia of the natural somnambulist is similarly 
a natural issue of his half -a wakened mind ; his 
peculiar limitations of awareness reject everything 
not immediately pertinent to his contracted occu- 
pation, even to an insensibility to the light of my 
match, while lighting a candle with a match of his 
own providing. The trance-state is again selec- 
tively, in some directions exaltedly, responsive, 
while yet mindful of other phases of the world in 
which it moves only in that unacknowledged fash- 
ion that must be regarded as a maimed, curtailed 
incorporation. The same is true of hypnosis ; here 
the replacement of spontaneity by imposed sug- 
gestion offers more definite experimental proof, 
and brilliantly discloses the manner and measure 
of the impaired incorporation, which even when 
seemingly insensitive and unresponsive, paradoxi- 
cally yields the recognition of what it ignores. 
The anaesthesias of hysteria by their more system- 
atic status and emotional reenforcement become 
the classic exemplars of this elusive but fascinating 



488 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

group. Paradoxical and capricious in the inclu- 
sions and exclusions of their responsiveness, there 
is yet method in their subtle madness, that like 
diplomacy, conceals more than it reveals. In the 
still more personally pervasive disintegrations of 
the mind, the detachment of the seceding state 
from the awareness of the life of its alternate 
— which may be one-sided or reciprocal accord- 
ing to the nature of the dividing lesion — carries 
the ansesthesia to its most intricate development. 
Throughout the series it plays a directive part, 
and establishes a failure of incorporation, as a 
typical sequence of abnormal concentration. Of 
peculiar importance as evidence of such loss of 
privilege is the failure of registry by the incorpo- 
rative self, and equally the indirect registry that 
ensues in spite of the psychic nullification ; while 
the contradictions which the altered consciousness 
is forced to tolerate in order to keep faith with 
its imposed anaesthesias, yet further intricate a 
decidedly complex situation. 

The loss of orientation suggests a deep-seated 
impairment, a decided breach with normality; it 
involves an out-of-relationship with the deeper 
implications of experience ; and its interpretation 
bears closely upon the allied philosophic issues. 
It proposes the problem of subject and object. 
While I may be assured that my knowledge of 
the objective world is but the restatement of my 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 489 

mental responsiveness, I yet insist upon holding 
apart the mental constructions founded upon fact, 
from those whose origin is prompted by the more 
spontaneous energies of the same psychic endow- 
ment that reveals to me the world of matter. 
Stated more simply, I know the world without, 
which in a very true sense is a world of my own 
construction ; and yet by exercise of the same 
privileges, I know the more intimate mental world 
in which my imaginings hold sway ; while in addi- 
tion I recognize, as in my practical behavior I 
utilize, the relations of the one to the other. 
Unless I hold apart the world of fancy from the 
world of reality, I jeopardize my practical sanity. 
I must ever distinguish between my inventions 
and my experiences, my memories and my fancies, 
my hopes and my observations, my intentions and 
my deeds, and most decidedly between my dreams 
and the waking reality. Illusion, hallucination, 
error, fallacy, are common enough ; and a consid- 
erable range of deception is the common lot. We 
are ever ready to eke out vague perception by sub- 
jective contributions, as the comprehensive range 
of illusions, normal and abnormal, abundantly il- 
lustrates. So long as in normal situations we hold 
the two apart, and yet realize the transitions from 
one to the other and their reciprocal reactions, we 
may be said to orientate our momentary mental 
occupation to the momentary environment. Vary- 



490 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ing with the attitude of such occupation, the 
orienting process will assume variably explicit or 
distinctive form. In receiving a sense-impression, 
I follow it with an immediate judgment of the 
status thereof ; I not only see the chair, but decide 
that it is a real chair, occupying actual space, 
and not a painting or a reflection or an hallucina- 
tion ; and when I exercise my will upon the object 
thus presented, I expect the latter to exhibit the 
behavior natural to the physical world. If I make 
a proper lifting effort, I expect the chair to rise ; 
and if I let go my hold, to see it fall. I thus con- 
stantly, however undesignedly, verify, experiment 
with, and anticipate the relations of the material 
world, and in accord therewith shape my practical 
tendencies to thought and action. Even in my 
most thought-centred attitudes I maintain such 
supporting, though subdued relation to my envi- 
ronment. When my orientation fails, it presents 
a confusion in some measure between the inner 
and the outer world. Yet the awareness of such 
confusion will emerge only so far as I maintain 
relations, however enfeebled, to each, and recog- 
nize the subjective by contrast with the objective. 
If all my impressions remain of one consistent 
type, they constitute for the moment my world ; 
I am in that world and of it, and questions of 
reality do not arise. Such experience is convin- 
cing; and though it may be subjective, it is not 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 491 

subjective to me until I have some other standard 
of reality by which to feel it so. To me, while 
dreaming, my dream-experience is real, quite as 
real, even more vividly so, than the incidents of 
my more critical wakefulness ; and it is a dream 
only to my awakened judgment. Conversely, I 
may be the victim of a realistic and terrifying 
hallucination, and yet recognize its true origin by 
observing that my hallucinated image does not 
behave like the rest of the world against which it 
is projected. The shadow that moves across the 
background proves the nature of the one as well 
as of the other. If I have so excited my brain- 
cells by alcohol, or mescal, or hasheesh, that they 
react by calling forth things of fancy, I yet real- 
ize their unlikeness to the things of solid flesh, 
because despite my subjection to the drug, I am 
awake to these outer solicitations. 

A characteristic state of disturbed orientation 
thus inclines to a confusion of subjective and ob- 
jective, the intrusion of an inwardly prompted 
impression into an outward situation ; in other 
words, a pseudo-perception or hallucination. For 
there are but two sources of the mental impres- 
sion ; and what is not garnered from without is 
contributed from within. The problem is twofold : 
the conditions under which such hallucinatory 
images arise, and their mode of affecting orienta- 
tion. Our knowledge in regard to the first is so 



492 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

beset with hypothesis that it seems better to waive 
ultimate solution, and provisionally to recognize 
a condition of over-susceptibility within certain 
groups of brain-cells as a disposing condition of 
hallucinations. Such peculiar disposition is clearly 
favored by temperamental constitution, is induced 
or facilitated by the specific action of drugs, by 
the enfeeblements of fasting, insomnia, or fatigue, 
the excitement of intense anxiety, the instabilities 
of hysteria, or the disqualifications of hypnotism. 
Under these excitations, in their extreme forms 
overstepping the borderland of sanity, percep- 
tions arise taking on the semblance of sense-con- 
ditioned appearances. The source of the phantasm 
is always subjective, though variously prompted. 
In hypnosis it is implanted by suggestion, and 
meeting with no hindrance to immediate develop- 
ment, springs into life with the suddenness and 
vividness of a dream ; and like a dream, is neces- 
sarily credited because the corrective reactions to 
the world of reality are in both cases suspended. 
Hence the orientation is impaired, and is so, be 
it observed, not because an hallucination arises, 
but because it is credited ; and is credited because 
the orientation to the environment is distorted 
from the normal perspective. The brain excited 
with hasheesh or mescal reacts by projecting 
visions ; but as these are recognized as such, the 
orientation is saved. Yet between retention and 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 493 

loss, there intervenes in such psychic complexi- 
ties a varied range of transitional, half-credited 
appearances that are coquetted with, partly as 
make-believe, partly as real, and possibly assisted 
in their forthcoming by an assenting inclination. 
When Dickens walked the streets with little Nell 
at his side, when Miss X. saw in the projection 
on the crystal screen a phantom Palissy tearing up 
garden-palings, when De Quincey's opium-drugged 
vision converted the legs of chairs and tables into 
loathsome reptiles, or when Dr. Mitchell, under 
the influence of mescal, saw an elaborate Gothic 
tower taking shape before his eyes, there was in 
each case a recognition of the subjective source 
of the vision, though the conditions under which 
these projections occurred were variously abnor- 
mal. But when my hypnotized subject leaps across 
the hearth-rug under the impression that it is 
a brook, or sees a photograph on a blank card ; 
when Mile. Smith encounters her " spirit " mentor 
in her daily occupations, or sees the projection of 
her Martian alphabet upon luminous air ; or when 
Miss Beauchamp hears the taunts of her other 
self, and converts the reading of the actual words 
before her into wholly different and alarming mes- 
sages, the orientation is variously interfered with, 
and the integrity of thought and action in some 
part sacrificed. Yet for the comprehension of the 
subconscious activities as abnormally displayed, 



494 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

the transitional varieties of impaired orientation 
are equally significant. Here belong particularly 
the hallucinations of hysteria, and of the post- 
hypnotic state ; and it is similarly by the projection 
of an hallucination that in cases of disordered per- 
sonality the detached consciousness establishes 
intercourse with its dissociated mate. The most 
brilliant example thereof — because unaffected by 
waking complications — is furnished by the record 
of Mr. Hanna, whose dreams during his disin- 
tegrated period were of two distinctive orders; 
the ones, weak in tone and bare in detail, finding 
their origin in the handicapped mental life sequent 
to his accident, the others, far more vivid, being 
projections from the older, complete experience. 
These might equally well have appeared, as in 
other instances they did appear, during waking 
hours, while the impaired personality was in pos- 
session. By such subtle means the issue of a lapsed 
orientation takes the form of an hallucination, 
which arises from peculiarly disposed susceptibil- 
ity, and makes its entry upon the mental stage in 
mimic semblance of a real performer. Such usur- 
pation may be so systematic and extensive as to 
replace the one self by another, the real world by 
a fictitious counterpart. 

Normal orientation is maintained by the con- 
stant application of a corrective judgment; and 
the lapse of such judgment, or of the feeling of 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 495 

relation to which it may be reduced, constitutes 
a loss of orientation. That the exercise of such 
critical privilege involves a directive procedure, 
both active and personal in tone, is obvious; and 
that to such extent it implies the integrity of 
initiative may be anticipated. It is, however, 
pertinent to note that the active factor of such 
adjustment presupposes an open channel of 
sensibility, and that the closure of such channel 
gives the opportunity for the intrusion of the 
subjective movements of the mind. The critical 
judgment finds its natural application in the adjust- 
ment to outer relations; for both are phases of 
mental alertness. As we lose the outer world, we 
invite dreams. As the hypnotic consciousness is 
contracted to a narrow range of outer perception, 
it is the more at the mercy of suggested halluci- 
nations. As the intensity and swirl of delirium 
enthrall the mind, the actual environment is oblit- 
erated, and the patient becomes the victim of his 
own fevered fancies ; while in the more lucid 
intervals, the recovery of an undercurrent of ori- 
entation is tested at once by some recognition of 
the subjective tissue of the troubled visions, and 
by some interest in real stimuli. The lighter 
forms of impaired orientation may be no more 
than mere bewilderment, — the momentary doubt- 
ing whether so unexpected an appearance can be 
real, or can come upon one while awake, which 



496 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

means orientated to the world of reality. Yet 
its developed form invites and inevitably yields to 
hallucinations; and this for the very reason that 
the vacating of the field by the active outward 
adjustment is an abdication in favor of the subjec- 
tive. Exclusion from the one world is immersion 
in the other ; and it is characteristically in the mo- 
ment of regaining the normal vista, after more or 
less prolonged immersion in the world of visions, 
that the loss of the critical judgment and the 
chaos which it entailed, become intimately felt. 
Yet once more, it is the confusion of the critical 
judgment in such half -ad justed conditions as hys- 
teria and personal disintegration, through the para- 
doxical allegiances which they demand, that adds 
to the interpretation its most distinctive complex- 
ity, requiring in place of distinctions of retention 
or loss, discerning and intricate analyses. 

As the mental wave sweeps through the nervous 
system to its natural consummation in action, its 
progress is in a measure sanctioned, assisted, or 
directed, not merely submitted to; and the loss 
of such controlling privilege may be described as 
an impaired initiative, — an issue that presents 
distinctive aspects according to the completeness 
of the invasion and its relations to disturbances 
of thought and sensibility. Its typical embodi- 
ment is an imperative impulse, an enforced action, 
or at the slightest, one partially detached from 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 497 

the central stream. To complete the terminology 
in which anaesthesia stands for impaired incor- 
poration, hallucination for defective orientation, 
there seems no apter term than impulsion for the 
lapsed or distorted initiative. Yet the impaired 
initiative is like the other defects, a psychic, not 
a psychological loss. There is no true paralysis, 
even though the muscles seem impotent, nor is 
the imperative impulse parallel in status to a 
twitch, or spasm, or epileptic seizure, discharging 
irregularly into muscular channels. The distorted 
action is still significant conduct, and the pheno- 
menon is abnormal and complex, not in the main 
because the action is impulsive, but because being 
so, it yet proceeds with such high degree of logi- 
cal pertinence. Though enforced, the impulses are 
intelligently maintained, and thus rightfully enter 
the psychic domain. 

Referring to the normal analysis for the rela- 
tions of the sense of initiative to the return report 
and direction of the accomplished movement, it 
will be sufficient to bear in mind that so abnor- 
mal a procedure as automatic writing, while in all 
cases involving a lapsed initiative, may or may not 
proceed to further implication of loss of orien- 
tation and incorporation. The hand may write 
automatically while its owner is unaware of its 
projected expressions, and yet may feel the move- 
ment and may read the record as it proceeds, — 



498 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

all the while fully alert to his surroundings. In 
acting out a post-hypnotic suggestion, the subject 
may display closely allied powers. Yet some indi- 
viduals cannot command automatic writing with- 
out first going into a trance that entails to some 
extent a loss of the actual objective situation. 
The trance-state is in this respect quite variable, 
and is compatible with almost all varieties of 
orientation, from full responsiveness to the envi- 
ronment to complete exclusion therefrom. Quite 
characteristic of the fully privileged initiative is the 
feeling of intention that precedes, by an instant 
or longer, the actual execution ; it is with the 
presence of this factor, more intimately than with 
any other, that there arises the feeling of freedom 
as well as of personal motive. This has altogether 
disappeared in developed automatic writing, as also 
in any activity of similar status in which the per- 
former regards his action as an interested spec- 
tator would look upon an intruded control of his 
muscles from some source outside himself. In 
the slighter departures from abnormality there is 
hardly an actual impulsion ; for the procedure 
involves an assisting though not directing disposi- 
tion. Yet the impaired initiative, even in such alert 
states, is apt to bring about some measure of anaes- 
thesia, — an issue that accords with our general 
formula. 1 It has been verified that frequently the 

1 See pages 116-139, and page 285. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 499 

hand that writes automatically is insensitive ; and 
that in the " table-tilting " of the spiritualistic 
seance, the muscles of the arm are often tightly 
tensed without arousing an awareness of their 
contraction ; indeed, the subject remains quite 
convinced that his energy is in no way responsible 
for the (to him) uninitiated movement. It is thus 
clear, in the light of the abnormal data, that the 
impaired initiative is of all the factors the least 
likely to become effective in isolation ; its en- 
feeblement is prone to involve similar defect in 
incorporation (anaesthesia) even when orientation 
is retained ; and the development of its more pro- 
nounced forms requires so profoundly dissociated 
a state as to subject the entire range of privileges 
to ready forfeiture. 

The most typical form of an impaired initia- 
tive is one that substitutes for spontaneous action 
an impulse imposed from another source than the 
directive will. The resulting phenomena differ 
mainly according to the origin of such impulse, 
and to the state upon which it is intruded. In 
somnambulism it arises in the subconscious strata 
aroused to activity by some dream-like quest ; in 
hypnosis it finds its largest field of application, 
because the removal of initiative is here so nearly 
complete that any suggestion, not too violently 
incompatible with the subject's normal behavior, 
finds the muscular channels for its execution at 



500 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

command ; while in hysteria the impulses arise 
through some detached subconscious susceptibility, 
which enforces its intentions in spite of a seemingly 
alert will, or upon some other phase of the joint 
personality, which, without share in the plans and 
intentions, finds itself driven to a definite action 
by an imperious impulse. The subject's own 
awareness in such a situation is clearest in the 
post-hypnotic state, in which frequently he is alert 
enough to appreciate the inconsequence of his act, 
and yet can find no peace until the haunting im- 
pulse is appeased. In so complex a disintegration 
as that of Miss Beauchamp, the serious conflicts 
and perplexities of her life are largely due to the 
bondage to these impulses, frequently initiated by 
one of the partial personalities, but imposed upon 
another as a penalty enforced upon some occasions 
with a knowledge of its source, and upon others 
without it. The field of these impulsions is charac- 
teristically that of the deeper disturbances, whose 
analogies to the symptoms of actual insanity hardly 
need emphasis ; and it is thus characteristic be- 
cause such disturbances involve a loss of personal 
adjustment. Such status belongs to them notably 
in so far as they are of spontaneous origin and 
force their entry upon the active concerns of life. 
Impulsions with restricted spheres of influence, 
confined to segregated areas, or artificially pro- 
duced, are exemplified in the transient disquali- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 501 

fications of automatism and hypnosis. When in 
such states of enfeebled initiative suggestibility 
appears, it does so, not as an added or accidental 
phenomenon, but as a natural consequence of the 
former ; the existence of the impulsion is an ex- 
pression of suggestibility. When the independence 
of initiative is reduced towards complacency, and 
all assertiveness and resistance is exchanged for 
abeyance or passivity, the vacating thus induced 
opens the channels to any vigorous solicitation 
to which the mind may be exposed. It is the pre- 
sence of normal initiative that prevents our mus- 
cular system from being played upon by any 
chance appeal, and reserves its use for the expres- 
sion of our own will. With this disabled or sus- 
pended, by whatever means, the responsiveness to 
suggestion follows inevitably, and will proceed as 
far as the retained powers permit. Hence the wide 
range of suggestion in hypnosis ; and hence also 
the liability of such developed automatism to in- 
volve as well loss of incorporation and orientation : 
for the tenantless condition of the brain reduces 
the psychic organism to a curtailed status, with 
restricted sensibilities, thought, and will ; and of 
which the abnormal, at times seemingly incredi- 
ble, domination of imposed impulses is the most 
notable issue. 

The combined privileges of incorporation, ori- 
entation, and initiative acquire meaning with 



502 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

reference to a self ; with the conjoint impairment 
of all, an altered state is induced ; and when such 
alteration is enduring and pervades the active life, 
the integrity of the self is forfeited, and the possi- 
bilities of unified conduct and development pro- 
portionately lost. It is because this active factor 
of the mental progression is so commanding, that 
the sense of initiative is of all the participants in 
the mental procedure the most intimately bound 
up with the personal feelings. That this feeling of 
the ego as the prime mover and maintainer of the 
psychic life is not the whole of personality, and 
possibly only a sensible index thereof, needs but 
moderate emphasis. The feeling of self-activity 
is an acquisition variously exercised and variously 
forfeited ; its maintenance — doubtless a most com- 
plex affair — centres about the feeling of transition 
from one moment of consciousness to another, 
with some reference to the variable content of each, 
to the shifting of attention incident to its incorpo- 
ration, and to the feeling of effort needed to reach 
the next logical step. I become the more deeply 
conscious of my striving self, the more strenu- 
ously, and possibly obstructedly, my thought-pro- 
gression proceeds. If the flow of thought comes 
copiously, luxuriously, I seem almost to lose the 
feeling of self-activity ; I am inspired as if writ- 
ing to the dictation of some outer prompting; 
and when my efforts are painfully unprofitable, 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 503 

I cannot forget myself in my work, but am ever 
the more conscious of my own impeded initiative. 
Accordingly, the loss of the self-feeling (not the 
loss of personality, to which, however, it has sub- 
tle relations) will be furthered by the lowering of 
the transitional attentive feeling that brings the 
incorporating, orienting, initiative issues to the 
awareness of their common motive source. The 
release of all such involuted awareness, along with 
clear mental contemplation, particularly in regions 
where doubt has long held sway, might well take 
on the guise of revelation, the cessation of strug- 
gle, the unification of conflicting pros and cons, 
the vanishing moment of the striving self ; and it 
is as such that I am disposed to interpret the sense 
of mystery unveiled that descends upon the more 
philosophically disposed ether-visionaries. That 
the revelation proves empty of content, and the 
very words recorded while the Delphic voice is 
still vibrant preposterously irrelevant, need not 
disconcert us ; for we are dealing with the release 
of a feeling, an impression alone. Ether seems 
peculiarly disposed in favorable temperaments — 
by what affinities we know not — to incite reflec- 
tive, contemplative, philosophic visions ; and with 
the suspension of all feeling of effort, with the 
vanishing of the objective world, the seer be- 
comes intimately merged with his thought, has no 
feeling of reaching his conclusions by transitional 



504 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

steps, but soars in the realms of exalted truth, 
seemingly momentous, because potent to dissipate 
his most troubled, most baffling obsessions of 
doubt. 1 

Such loss is particularly connected with contem- 
plative attitudes, because in these the relations of 
incorporation and initiative have already been in 
large measure suppressed. To facilitate such inner 
concentration, I have sought freedom from stimu- 
lation, and, if writing, have narrowed my motor 
field to my pen and my paper ; or I may sustain 
my reflections with closed eyes and motionless 
body, if absorbed in less formulated thought. It 
is easier to lose the sense of transition when the 
steps are ideal, not objectively registered, and thus 
become one with the thought. In the delineations 
of religious ecstasy there is always emphasized this 
loss of personal feeling, of worldliness and struggle, 
in an identified unity with the object of contem- 

1 It is for this, along with other bearings, that a detailed 
account was given of the ether revelations (pages 245-251). 
They are interesting as illustrative of the prevalence of orderly 
principles even in realms seemingly most remote from predicable 
sequence, and of the kind of generic basis that in many instances 
must be acceptable for lack of more specific interpretation. It is 
at once with surprise and with gratification that one meets with a 
recorded corroboration of a view arrived at by an individual mode 
of approach. In this connection I record with approbation of its 
able argument, the very similar presentation — in so far as the 
two touch upon a common field — of the article by Miss E. D. 
Puffer in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1900, and included in 
modified form in the Psychology of Beauty (1905), pages 59 sqq. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 505 

plation, — a state not inaptly described as self -hyp- 
nosis. Yet in lesser measure the self-feeling disap- 
pears when I sit passively at the theatre with eyes 
and ears only for the stage, and forget myself in 
the play, as with different attitude though in anal- 
ogous manner, the actor loses himself in his part. 
The transitions are here so effortless, so sponta- 
neously engaging, that I seek such distraction in 
recreation from the more strenuous occupations of 
the day. In all these instances the self-feeling 
vanishes, while yet mental alertness is retained ; 
if that were lost, sleep would ensue, or at best 
dreamy revery, and leave nothing to record. Yet 
it is pertinent to note that in many individuals 
by the peculiarity of their constitution, and in 
many states for all, the alertness of mental effort 
is conditioned by sensory alertness. Such persons 
think best with pen in hand or while dictating, 
spurred to instant record. They cannot think in- 
tently in the dark at all, requiring the sustaining 
symbols of alertness to support their initiative. 
Quite similarly, the closing of the eyes is used to 
bring on a state of release of guidance out of 
which hypnosis emerges ; and in light hypnosis 
the opening of the eyes brings the subject back 
to wakefulness. It is hardly accidental that in 
the Beauchamp case, the development of Sally's 
powers as an independent personality flourished 
from the day when this wayward individual got 



506 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

her eyes open without lapsing into another phase 
o£ her being. Thus the sense of alert initiative is 
most closely connected with the sense of person- 
ality ; it is in the active expression of my being 
that I feel my personality. Hence when, in situ- 
ations so unexpected as to tempt me to ques- 
tion the evidence of my senses, I resort to the 
expedient of pinching myself to see whether I 
am awake, the convincing factor of the test is not 
alone that I feel the smart, but that I am able to 
do the pinching; I prove my initiative as well as 
my incorporation, and thus establish my orienta- 
tion as normal. 

We are now prepared to resume the earlier 
considerations that centred about the distinction 
of revery and alertness, of drifting and concen- 
tration. If in the departure from the normal we 
are headed towards attitudes of increasing pur- 
poseful abstraction, we are preparing by such 
unevenness of attentive distribution for the en- 
trance in the neglected areas of subconsciously 
dominated procedures. A reference to the inci- 
dents of normal lapses of consciousness and to 
the conditions favorable to their occurrence, is 
sufficient to reinstate the normal issue, as well as 
its affiliations with the abnormal field. Exagger- 
ated concentration is familiar enough, and like- 
wise presents a distinct temperamental variation. 
There is in some individuals a natural inclina- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 507 

tion to become lost in thought, to do absorbedly 
whatever occupies them, and while thus engaged 
to remain immune, by the intense set of their 
attention, to outer solicitation. Absent-minded- 
ness is the penalty paid for such concentrative- 
ness; while too responsive and flitting activity — 
possibly in the extreme a scatter-brained disposi- 
tion — fails to adhere to purpose sufficiently to 
reap even modest rewards. We gauge the depth 
of such concentration, as we do the depth of 
sleep, by the vigor of an appeal from without 
that yet fails of response. Insensibility is the 
simplest consequence of extreme concentration, 
and consists, as we have seen, in the falling out 
of the field of awareness of privileges normally 
present. The portal narrows; and the interpre- 
tation of the psychic situation must take note as 
well of what goes on within the audience-chamber, 
as of what with a normal condition of the ingress 
would likewise have been admitted, but is now 
excluded. Such states of narrowed access are 
somnambulism and hypnotism : the first a mini- 
mum step towards wakefulness, alert only to a 
dream-imposed singleness of purpose, with no 
other responsiveness than the familiarized autom- 
atisms that are adequately regulated by lowered 
initiative; the second an extreme phase of ex- 
clusive concentration, arrived at by an opposite 
approach, through the curtailment of receptive- 



508 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

ness and the maiming of initiative, while retaining 
access to the motor apparatus in the service of a 
larger suggestiveness and a more vigorous mental 
energy. 

We may, indeed, go farther back towards con- 
ditions of abeyance and make connection with 
the constructive logical dream ; this, presumably 
retentive in some measure of its characteristic 
movement, presents a thought-awakening, while 
yet sensibilities and will are unaroused, and pre- 
sents the elaboration active upon the basis of inner 
resources, in dissociation from all other phases of 
the alert mental movement. Somnambulism adds 
thereto a restricted sphere of action, and thus be- 
comes an active constructive dream; it likewise 
incidentally demonstrates certain of the further 
issues (such as suggestibility) of a restricted and 
dissociated alertness. Hypnosis carries the unori- 
entated alertness to its ultimate issue. Upon the 
side of debarred privileges, it illustrates how such 
handicapped mental movement develops psychic 
anaesthesia as selective, as complex, and as exten- 
sive as suggestion is ingenious; and again in the 
positive field develops equally hallucinations and 
the varied distortion of the real world by pro- 
jections from the realm of suggestion-inspired 
imagery; and finally, how the same limitations 
encroach upon the field of action and there find 
their most salient demonstration. The subject 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 609 

acts out his hallucinations, undergoes the most 
convincing test of his anaesthesias, exhibits alike 
the paralysis of will and the more intimate service 
of motor channels inaccessible to normal control. 
The mode of manifestation of these losses of priv- 
ilege is equally indicative of the retained field : 
the direct availability of motor channels to outer 
suggestion is pronounced because the possibilities 
of inhibition are themselves inhibited ; the retained 
alertness of elaborative procedure is sufficient to 
command an unrestrained and simple, and in ex- 
ceptional cases a complex range of logical pro- 
cedure; the retention of sensibility is adequate 
to the imposed tasks, and by suggestion may be 
raised to exalted values. Yet all these functions 
are dissociatedly manifested, and make but slight 
and uncertain connections with the normal self. 
It is because of the completeness of this loss of 
relationship with the normal personality — itself 
the expression of narrowed-mindedness — that hyp- 
nosis offers ready occasion for the establishment 
by suggestion, of an altered self, which in turn 
may be developed into a fairly consistent character 
(or successive assumptions of several characters) 
through frequency and systematic ordering of 
hypnotic experiences, aided as ever by the natural 
temperament and histrionic susceptibilities of the 
subject. The connection between the normal and 
the hypnotic self will, without special interference 



510 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

by suggestion, be attenuated, so that the actions 
of hypnosis will make no report to the normal 
registry; or more accurately, what is conscious 
to the one dominance is subconscious to the other, 
and thus requires subtle, indirect, and paradoxical 
procedures to elicit evidence of what the primary 
allegiance ignores. From this status no factor of 
the complex alteration of personality is lacking, 
except the more concomitant appearance of the 
two dissociated phases; and this is supplied by 
the post-hypnotic suggestion, that presents the 
same grouping of phenomena under a more nat- 
ural light, in which an almost normally orientated 
alertness may look upon and accept, as best it 
may, the intrusion from the dissociated realm. 

It is in its application to the distorted growth 
and crippled impairment of personality that the 
principle of dissociation finds its most complex 
and in a sense crucial test. Such phenomena thrive 
in the instability of hysteria; and fundamentally 
hysteria is contracted personality. It is abnormal 
concentrativeness of more enduring and systematic 
type, conditioned by functional disordering. The 
mental energy is deficient, enfeebled ; the normal 
scope of mental concerns cannot be encompassed, 
and some phases thereof must be sacrificed. The 
mental realm disintegrates by lack of centralized 
power to hold it together ; something falls away 
by the shrinkage or withering of its connection 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 511 

•with the vitalizing core — which is the mainte- 
nance o£ the personal life. Though conditioned 
by organic relations, a psychic order of values pre- 
vails in the enforced losses, that yet partake in 
restricted measure of the nature of rejections. 
When called upon to sacrifice, we yield our pos- 
sessions rather than any part of ourselves, what 
we have rather than what we are ; and it is this 
principle 1 that directs the loss of realms of incor- 
poration, and saves, so far as may be, what is inti- 
mate and indispensable to self-preservation. That 
such enfeebleuient is itself fluctuating, and makes 
possible in the lesser disabilities the alternate re- 
gaining and loss of the more complete personality, 
follows naturally from the prevalent instability ; 
the self, again in better circumstances, takes out of 
pawn, as it were, what has been deposited in its 
own subconscious treasury. Quite commonly such 
is not enduringly or completely possible ; and the 
handicapped self must establish such relations with 
life as its crippled resources make possible. Con- 
centrativeness — narrow-mindedness in a psycho- 
logical sense — of this peculiarly organic type is 
not casual, but more or less chronic ; and the very 
condition that it intrinsically represents brings 
with it the further specific impairments that fol- 
low as related issues of the common underlying 
restrictedness. 

1 See pages 310-312. 



512 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

Holding in mind that the debarred privileges 
and energies are sacrificed only in that distinctive, 
or possibly equivocal manner that retains them in 
suppressed or detached function, one may readily 
trace the consequences of such peculiar loss. It 
begins with an incorporative impairment ; and in- 
asmuch as such adjustment to experience is the 
guiding clue to a large range of action, it follows 
that the field of expression will be almost equally 
invaded. Knowing and doing are so intimately 
integrated that anaesthesia in the former field 
leads to psychic paralysis in the latter. The 
psychic nature of the defect is in no aspect more 
definitely discernible than in this relation : the 
very act, that as an expression of initiative the 
hysterical patient is unable to perform, becomes 
easily possible by the direct transfer of stimulus to 
coordinated movement through the unimpaired 
lower order of responsiveness, when the maimed 
personality is circumvented. 1 As a further conse- 
quence, in this deficiency the incapacity is not 
regulated by the disabling of muscles, but by the 
organization of conduct. On the one hand, signi- 
ficant fields of awareness fall away, and on the 
other, significant groups of behavior ; while in 
both instances the lower orders of assimilation 
and responsiveness are retained, and by devious 
paths reach expression. With such comprehension 

1 Illustrations thereof will be found on pages 317-319. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 513 

of the type of symptoms that follow the enfeeble- 
ment of energy and of dissociation concomitant 
therewith, the special groupings thereof which 
particular hysterical cases represent, become no 
more of a problem than the varieties of tempera- 
ment and experience inevitably make them. 

It is, then, because of the sacrifice of full-mea- 
sured incorporation, orientation, and initiative 
through psychic contractedness that the hysteri- 
cal consciousness becomes the most versatilely 
instructive embodiment of subconscious activity 
in the abnormal field. A further consequence of 
such forfeiture of higher privilege is the reversed 
perspective in which the normally subconscious, 
and notably the semi-organic, types of procedures, 
that in a normal sweep of consciousness have but 
slight representation, find prominent and tenacious 
registry. Being cut off relatively from the higher 
and outwardly directed phases of mental life, the 
hysterical consciousness is more sensitive to the 
inner and lower ones. The insistent prominence 
of bodily symptoms in hypochondria is an instance 
thereof. The liability of hysterical patients to an 
aggravation of their peculiar sj^mptoms under 
emotional shock is another ; and this in turn is 
but an exaggeration of temperamental sensitive- 
ness, of which we all appreciate the nature by 
recalling how indelible are certain impressions, 
possibly coming upon us in a keenly susceptible 



514 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

moment, that deeply stirred our feelings, and how 
readily, sometimes accidentally, these are rein- 
stated by an associative shock or condition. Hys- 
teria retains such sensitive mental scars; and 
through the slight irritation of these, there recur 
the disordering consequences of the original in- 
jury. Such trauma or shock is a common symptom 
in the genesis of hysteria and is retained in a sub- 
conscious order of registry, — a deep organic asso- 
ciation that is ever ready to surge forward when 
a kindred situation arouses its dormant sensibili- 
ties. 1 It is through extreme development in this 
direction that mental influences are exerted upon 
functions, such as circulation and the metabolic 
changes, normally remote from the conscious field; 
and that thus hysterical hyper-sensitiveness to 
organic registry and control becomes significant 
for the interpretation of the fertile realms of men- 
tal therapeutics. Upon the more intellectual side, 
the relation indicates, once more, the availability 
to the partially disenfranchised consciousness of 
resources that normally depend upon the happy 
support of favoring issues ; it appears also in the 
power of suggestion to restore memories that have 
lapsed from the more conscious standing, — a re- 
sult as significantly shown by the ability of Miss 
Beauchamp to recover by " fixing her mind " what 
otherwise is lost, as in the more normal " crystal 

1 The instance cited on page 371 is peculiarly explicit. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 515 

vision " of Miss X. The far-reaching potency of 
this explanatory principle — thus expressed as an 
increased penetration into and command of sub- 
conscious procedures, and derived as a consequence 
of partial dissociation from the normal conscious 
status — is to be traced throughout the extensive 
annals of hysterical exaltation ; for it is this phase 
of psychic abnormality that has led to popular 
misconception of its nature and to extravagant 
views of its import. 

Dissociation accounts not alone for the most 
distinctive phenomena incident to impaired per- 
sonality ; it accounts 1 for the alteration thereof. 
The dissolution of the feelings of self-activity 
has already entered into our analyses ; the disso- 
lution of personality is a far more comprehensive 
impairment, with larger affiliations. Personality 
encompasses the organic feelings, the vividness 
and warmth of one's own experiences, the conti- 
nuity of memories, the consistency of character, 
and much besides ; its disturbance may be precipi- 
tated or furthered by serious changes in any of 
these phases of being. If I were suddenly to be- 
come subject to wholly strange types of organic 
sensation, or were to find no familiar landmarks 
of assimilation, or if I were to lose my experiences 

1 In so far as such accounting is in terms of descriptive details 
or their immediate interpretation, reference may be made to 
pages 323-333 and 403^06. 



516 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

and recollections and find myself stranded in a 
foreign realm, I certainly should be a differ- 
ent individual ; and should, however, realize the 
change only in so far as I retained some measure 
of my former self. 1 Under a complete disability, 
I may simply forsake my personality and know 
nothing of my desertion, starting life as if anew ; 
and hours or days or years later, I may suddenly 
awake with a painful sense of a gap in my orien- 
tation, — finding myself amid unfamiliar sur- 
roundings, with my former feelings and memories 
restored, and bewildered by my out-of-relation- 
ship to the present. Such change is naturally the 
issue of a sudden wrench of the normal orienta- 
tion from its moorings, and finds its analogies in 
the changes of personality by suggestion, in hyp- 
nosis, and in their speedy termination with the re- 
sumption of the normal self, when the obsession 
is lifted. It finds further analogy in the sense of 
strangeness and difficulty of orientation that ensues 
when life must be resumed under sadly altered 
conditions, with an intimate part of our life or our 

1 The change of bodily sensibility exhibited in such a case of 
altered personality as that of Louis V. (page 384) is a common 
symptom ; the change of mood and disposition, doubtless under 
similar conditions, such as is exhibited by Felida X. (pages 377, 
378), is even more common. The loss of memory is best illus- 
trated in such cases as that of Mr. Bourne (page 386) and those 
following, while the most sudden and complete loss is exemplified 
in the case of Mr. Hanna (pages 394 sqq.). Each aids to induce 
an altered personality. 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 517 

possessions taken from us. Readjustment under 
such circumstances, though quite without the 
exaggerated perplexities that obtained in the case 
of Mr. Hanna, has yet the same problem of the 
joining of the old and the new, the reconciliations 
to the past, the finding one's self in the present. 

In bringing these considerations to bear upon 
the status of altered personalities as they appear 
in a biographical sketch of their unfoldment, one 
must forego too individual an interpretation. 
Psychology can be called upon no more legiti- 
mately than any other science dealing with organ- 
ically variable data, to account for the precise 
and concrete issues of the principles whose generic 
validity is its chief concern. It is no more possi- 
ble to furnish, and no more warranted to demand, 
detailed accounting for the particular issues that 
disintegration assume in a given instance, than it 
is to expect a like interpretation of a normal indi- 
vidual in which his every trait, thought, action, 
emotion, attitude, and experience shall be consis- 
tently derived from an analysis of his psychic 
composition. The profitable interest is not in the 
wholly unpredictable issue that may follow upon 
a disorganizing shock or distorted growth of the 
mind, but in the generic relations involved. 

It has been duly set forth that such disqualifi- 
cations in the deeper concerns of the mind have, 
on the whole, two distinctive modes of origin, 



518 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

with allowance both for transition between and 
combinations of the two; of these the shock, 
particularly in cases of a mature personality, 
reduces the self to a lowered, in some cases more 
aptly a transferred range of endowment; the 
other and more instructive variety suggests a 
developmental flaw, which induces transiently or 
more permanently a failure to achieve the unified 
coherence of the mental life that is the normal 
expression of individuality. Such differences of 
origin naturally entail a different perspective of 
retained and lost functions, yet may be expected 
to follow common principles in the status of what 
is distortedly retained or variously curtailed. In 
respect to versatility, actively developing abnor- 
malities are naturally more instructive than mere 
reduction of privilege ; yet the latter bring the 
compensation of greater definiteness and freedom 
from subtle complication, while in cases of success- 
ful reconstruction of the shattered personality (not- 
ably that of Mr. Hanna), they in turn offer the 
genetic stages of recovery, in which the relations 
between the new and the old become peculiarly 
instructive. Having these in mind, but focusing 
the considerations more particularly upon the in- 
stances of the warped development of a maturing 
self, we may pass in final review the principles that 
obtain in such failures of personal adjustment. 
Personality has been set forth not as an inev- 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 519 

itable datum, but as an achievement, — truly a 
normal issue furthered by the ordinary vicissitudes 
of life, yet one whose establishment may involve 
struggle and compromise, relinquishment, and 
concentrated as well as sustained purpose. The 
manner by which such an issue arises, and the 
essential contribution thereto of the lower regis- 
ters of consciousness, indicate that failure in this 
respect must proceed from a comprehensive dis- 
ordering of all the constituent phases of the 
mind's progressions. Hence the impairments of 
altered personality encroach upon the joint realms 
of incorporation, orientation, and initiative; and 
a composite and pervading disordering of the 
three with reference to the actual environment 
is of itself sufficient to induce an alteration of 
personality. The manner of such impairment is 
the individual factor in the case, and varies 
according as it is the expression of the unsettled 
promptings of adolescence, or again the summary 
dethronement of an established self. A further 
generic principle enforces that the distinctive 
quality and manner of such impairment is that to 
whose nature the analysis of hysteria furnishes 
the essential clue. 1 Stated roughly, the relations 

1 Such statements refer obviously only to those types of loss 
that come within the field of the present essay. More permanent 
and organic, as well as otherwise motived alterations of personal- 
ity are common in insanity, and require a different range of prin- 
ciples for their interpretation. 



520 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

in alternating personality, of the one self to that 
which replaces it, or in more complex cases, to 
its dissociated counterpart, resemble the normal 
intercourse between such organized phases of 
conduct as are distinctively the concern of con- 
sciousness, and those that are more particularly 
maintained by subconscious service. Yet the 
relations in the one case are normal and in the 
other abnormal, with, however, a significant 
affiliation between the two. The type of abnor- 
mality that thus obtains is summed up in the 
comprehensive significance of hysteria. Thus 
considered, altered personality of such distinctive 
type becomes the consequence of a dissociative 
"fault" based upon an hysterical enf eeblement ; 
such alteration becomes crystallized about fairly 
constant axes into a more or less consistent yet 
abnormal personality, and becomes so through 
the coherence and systematic grouping of such 
recurrent states, with their peculiar losses and 
retentions. The building up of this altered self 
is no spontaneous or miraculous achievement, but 
follows, though irregularly and waywardly, the 
same lines of psychic development as obtain in 
the normal establishment of a unified personality. 
The personal centre is shifted, as it were, and 
each personality is eccentric to the other. 

From this point forward, the interpretation 
must proceed towards more individual and detailed 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 521 

analyses, for which the descriptive data may them- 
selves be regarded as sufficiently representative. 
Why one individual and not another succumbs to 
such disintegrating tendencies can no more be 
determined than why in succumbing he presents 
one series of abnormal sequences and not another. 
It is just at this point that the emphasis of a 
wholesome perspective draws attention to the gen- 
eral principles and not to the variant details. It is 
not Mars and India and Balsamo and Marie Antoi- 
nette that engage our interest in the story of Mile. 
Smith and her trance-personalities; nor are we 
over-anxious in regard to the precise source or sig- 
nificance of such imaginative vagaries. We are 
interested in the measure to which such detached 
mental energies conduct a sustained and coher- 
ent construction ; in the slow maturing of what 
seemingly bursts forth as the inspiration of the 
moment ; in the dramatic completeness of the altera- 
tions of personality that here are confined to a cir- 
cumscribed area and (with occasional exceptions) 
hold aloof from the intimate world of daily inter- 
course; and in the many indirect evidences that the 
story furnishes for the subtle and pervasive in- 
fluence of subconsciously dominated integration. 
Similarly, the case of Miss Beauchamp is signifi- 
cant, not for the detailed incidents and perplexing 
unfoldment of the intricate plot, but for the gen- 
eral significance of these features. The story illus- 



522 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

trates particularly the possibilities of a multiple 
partitioning of several components, which them- 
selves change and develop intricate relations to 
one another ; it illustrates, further, the important 
varieties of such disturbance, in which the diver- 
gent personalities appear more or less simulta- 
neously ; it illustrates the comprehensive scope of 
such a conflicting self as " Sally " in relation to 
the more successive or partitioned phases of being 
represented by the other selves ; it illustrates as 
well how diversified, overlapping, and yet distinc- 
tive are the habits, tastes, endowments, acquisi- 
tions, and memories of the several states; and it 
illustrates how the restrictions of the several condi- 
tions may be released by the artifice of hypnosis 
and thus pave the way for the mutual reconcilia- 
tion of opposing phases, the extinction of the 
interfering opposition, and the restoration of a 
consistent individuality. In such service, these, 
as other cases, bring their worthiest contributions 
to our knowledge of abnormal psychology. 

Dissociation stands for divided mental alertness, 
a fractional type of procedure combining activity 
in one realm with quiescence or disqualification of 
what in a normal attitude would be associatedly 
active. Concentration is itself a miniature phase 
of dissociation; profitable work demands relin- 
quishment, exclusion, abstraction. Yet all these 
terms are relative, and the varieties of dissociation, 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 623 

indeed the intrinsic nature of the conception, pro- 
vide for a partitioning of activity; for there is 
activity in the lesser, diverted currents as well as 
in the main stream : such concurrent yet in part 
independent flow, or, more characteristically, the 
alternate rush of the waters now into this channel 
and again into that, marks the dissociative trends. 
The ellipse of dissociation is described about the 
two foci of contracted or partial activity and of 
partitioned activity ; the conjoint development of 
the two appears in the pronounced disturbances 
that distort the central unity of the self from its 
simpler orbit. 

The relation may be summarily outlined ; and 
first as partial activity. If I were able at will to 
fall asleep, I should expect such altered state to 
involve the loss of the world of sense, the world 
of thought, and the world of action. It seems less 
natural that I should be able to throw myself or be 
thrown into a condition in which I should lose the 
orientation to the outer world and yet continue to 
think and express thought by action ; such would 
be a dissociated state. Yet I appreciate that when 
in sleep I entertain dream-visions, I do thus par- 
tially and distortedly regain my elaborative activi- 
ties, and yet do not feel nor act. I appreciate that 
sleep-walking or the active dream is the unusual 
experience because a state in which I can get 
control of my muscles and make them walk and 



524 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

talk, or otherwise coordinate them to coherent 
behavior, is also a state in which I am attentive 
to my surroundings, and am indeed no longer 
asleep but awake. So complete an initiative is the 
counterpart of a complete orientation ; but a sup- 
pressed initiative guides my somnambulistic efforts 
without arousing me to awareness of my surround- 
ings : hence it is dissociated activity. The imme- 
diate consequence of such partial mental energy 
is a partitioned energy ; for what is done by the 
somnambulist is not recalled by the waking self. 
Consider the relation conversely : suppose that an 
impulse about as coherent and pertinent as that 
which starts the somnambulist upon his quest 
were to present itself to my waking conscious- 
ness. It could not achieve expression without 
consent of my alert initiative ; the motor mech- 
anism is reserved for my associated activity, and 
if such impulse were peculiarly tempting, I might 
resort to the device of keeping the machinery 
otherwise engaged, knowing well that temptation 
comes more enticingly to idle hands. Normally 
adjusted conduct thus resists dissociation. Trans- 
fer the situation to the hypnotic field, — and you 
have at once a different type of personality to 
deal with and an enlarged range of dissociated 
activity. The normal self with its full-measured 
associative privilege is now replaced by a person- 
ality whose sensibilities are dissociated from the 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 525 

complete incorporative organization that dominates 
the normal attitude, whose activities are equally 
debarred from an integral initiative. Hence the 
decided loss of relation between the hypnotic and 
the normal activity, as well as the indirect mode 
of intercourse between the two, becomes the most 
significant expression of the dissociatedness. 

At this point important distinctions enter, and 
particularly in two directions : first, the degree of 
complexity that the dissociated conduct attains ; 
second, whether it is alternate or concomitant with 
the normal dominance. The first query sets the 
problem of tracing the course of the dividing rift, 
the intricacy of its ramifications, placing the reten- 
tions on the one side and the losses on the other, 
and establishing precarious f ording-places between 
the two, where the bed of the stream is shallower 
than usual. The simplest division would be the 
horizontal one of higher and lower ; and such re- 
duction of status appears in the varied automa- 
tisms of somnambulism and hypnosis, and in the 
hysterical impairment of personality. Yet the 
possibilities of suggestion and the vagaries of 
hysteria offer divisions of psychic endowment — 
meandering lines of separation of personal phases 
of conduct — of such perplexing intricacy as to 
be amenable only to the most generic interpreta- 
tion. The two realms formed by such an organic 
scission out of an underlying unit of sovereignty, 



526 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

establish a manner o£ intercourse that becomes 
the subtle index of their psychic intimacy. Such 
complex behavior requires the withdrawal of the 
normally dominant self, and accordingly appears 
in alternate sequences, yet not without intrusions 
of the one field into the other. The concomi- 
tant types of dissociated activity play their parts, 
like the others, upon a common stage, not in sepa- 
rate scenes, however, but in different settings 
upon partitioned areas of the same "shift." The 
one set of activities continues, like a prolonged 
" aside," accompanying a movement for which it 
may have real or but casual pertinence. Such 
possibility is ever indicative of lesser depths of 
dissociation. Automatic writing appears in some 
cases amid full alertness ; the subconscious elabo- 
ration of thought commands the hand, while the 
dominant personality commands the voice and the 
remainder of the expressive equipment. Yet in 
most cases the automatic writing entails a loss of 
orientation, — the entrance into a different atti- 
tude, in which normal alertness has been sacrificed. 
Similarly, when Mr. Hanna is able to appreciate 
concomitantly the struggle between the two selves, 
at last confronted with their urgent reconcilia- 
tion, the possibilities of fusion are near at hand ; 
and when Miss Beauchamp can bring to a com- 
mon interview the representatives of her inner 
conflict, their subconscious dominance is on the 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 527 

wane. Yet the latter case is equally instructive in 
the opportunity afforded by this versatile house- 
hold for the intrusion of the one influence into 
the life of the other, and for the strategic dis- 
closure of such other-consciousness concomitantly 
with the dominant expression. It is the practical 
translation of the principle of dissociation into the 
varieties of abnormal experience that gives this 
conception its comprehensive import in psycholo- 
gical discussion. 

The further query remains as to what occurs 
when a portion of the domain or a partial domi- 
nance is surrendered, and how the varieties of such 
surrender are conditioned. That we are dealing 
here with a narrowing, an enfeeblement, at times 
a morbid exclusion, is clear enough ; but the ques- 
tion how the narrowing comes to entail such pe- 
culiar groupings of disqualification points to the 
portion of the problem for which we have at present 
but an empirical solution. We can trace the devel- 
opment of such surrender in degree and complexity, 
but must resort to hypothesis when we demand a 
more intimate interpretation. We can record that 
in its lesser form it is more in the nature of an exagf- 
gerated disposition, — one of many disproportion- 
ate developments inherent in the varieties of human 
character. When thus present, it may well bring 
with it its compensations; and without such subtle 
tendencies certain worthy forms of human endeavor 



528 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

would doubtless fail of achievement. Even genius 
may find its allegiances in this realm. In the inter- 
mediate grades it becomes questionable how far lia- 
bility to dissociated states is to be looked upon as 
a psychic impairment, or as simply and without 
qualification a deviation of disposition. Hypnosis 
may be said to include this neutral ground ; many 
who readily enter this state and present its most 
pronounced phenomena give clear evidence of their 
affiliation with other phases of psychic short- 
coming. Yet others present such susceptibility 
seemingly as the limit of their dissociability, and 
it may be with a fair restraint in the manner of 
yielding to the obsessions of the state. Such indi- 
viduals often possess decided mental vigor and 
attainments, which may, however, be achieved in 
spite of, rather than in freedom from, all measure 
of mental abnormality. It is safer to restrict the 
term defect or deviation to its psychological sense, 
without implying any judgment of inferiority or 
lowered moral esteem. Our minds are quite too 
wonderfully made to permit of easy judgments of 
gain or loss. For deviations from normality in one 
combination may present the condition of prized 
achievement, and in others of disqualification 
merely. But whether highly or lowly appraised, 
whether it facilitates the productiveness of a fer- 
tile mind, or encourages extravagance or derange- 
ment, the intrinsic nature of dissociation remains 



THE SUBCONSCIOUS AS ABNORMAL 529 

the same. Our ignorance of just what takes place 
in the mental estate when the partial and at times 
enforced relinquishment ensues, that introduces 
so altered an economy of its resources, is but part 
of our limitations of knowledge of the intrinsic 
nature of the mental movement. The most pro- 
mising outlook for the lessening in any measure 
of these limitations is by a discerning cultivation 
of the abnormal field under guidance of prin- 
ciples that find their surest support in normal 
psychology. 



Ill 

CONCLUSION 

The impression left upon the mind by such inti- 
mate examination of the less exposed aspects of 
its conduct may not inaptly be reflected in the con- 
clusion that man does not live by consciousness 
alone. Older and deeper are the psychic disposi- 
tions on the basis of -which, by some as yet unre- 
vealed history, consciousness may have developed, 
and developed to meet some need not adequately 
provided for by the inherited endowment. Such 
response presumably required a larger measure of 
coordination among the functioning dispositions, 
and succeeded in meeting the situation by a higher 
synthesizing efficiency. It is above all in the inte- 
gration of experience that the supreme and unique 
function of consciousness lies ; such is its peculiar 
and normal privilege and service. Nor is the unity 
thus established impugned by the extensive liabil- 
ity to disintegration to which the mind surrenders 
under stress of circumstance and frailty of consti- 
tution. On the contrary, these salient illustrations 
of the issues of disqualification — though beset 
with much wayward and unaccounted detail — 
enforce the allegiance to the principles that dom- 



CONCLUSION 531 

mate the growth, conduct, and vicissitudes of the 
normal human mind. 

The application of evolutionary conceptions to 
the psychic realm has proved so illuminating 
throughout all portions of the domain, as to re- 
quire of every proposed principle a thoroughgoing 
conformity to this commanding conception. Prin- 
cipalities of a common power, the several sciences 
dealing with living relations share in this alle- 
giance, and must each shape the ordering of its 
own estate to this inclusive dominance. To secure 
acceptance, an interpretation of the varieties of 
subconscious activity must readily find place in a 
system of mental evolution. Primarily, the subcon- 
scious must appear as a natural issue of the mental 
constitution, by exhibiting intimate relations to 
the mental economy. It must likewise maintain, 
through gradations of increasing complexity, coher- 
ent participation in the more developed mental con- 
cerns. Such transitional stages and sequences of 
unfoldment constitute the further test of its valid- 
ity. But all evolution implies a liability to arrest 
and decay, deformity and enfeeblement. Func- 
tions display their import as significantly in the 
issue of these dissolutions as in the manner of their 
upbuilding. Yet the paths of dissolution are inev- 
itably manifold and intricate. The emphasis of the 
evolutionary forces is towards a type, an adjusted 
standard ; the means to this end is through diver- 



532 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

sity and variety, — a versatile experimentation with 
the many that are called, in order that the fittest 
may be chosen. There is a trend in the affairs of 
evolution that intercepted at any stage shows the 
direction of the current which carries the process 
along. The convergence towards a normal product 
enforces a coherence of tendencies ; but the paths 
of dissolution are puzzlingly divergent. Yet in the 
organic system the manner of impairment reflects 
the influences that determine normal growth ; in 
this relation lie the significance of abnormal devi- 
ations, and the clue to their import. To disclose 
the order and psychological affiliations of this realm 
has been the purpose of the present undertaking. 
While confining the exposition to what is 
offered as the most convincing interpretation, it 
is well to appreciate the attitude of a differently 
derived and maintained survey. An opposite the- 
ory has framed its conception upon a fundamental 
emphasis of the schism of conflicting personalities, 
and upon the exceptional nature of allied pheno- 
mena. To account for these, it supposes the exist- 
ence in the mental constitution from the outset 
and in all its phases, of a factor wholly different 
from any here recognized, a pervasive influence 
in the psychic organism that only in exceptional 
circumstances becomes articulate, and is thus ham- 
pered in its expression, because until released from 
the thrall of ordinary consciousness, it cannot 



CONCLUSION 533 

throw off its enforced silence. It awaits the rare 
conjunction of circumstance and temperament, 
and then shoots forth in spontaneous perfection. 
It reaches independent expression in the emergence 
of a new personality, in the exaltations of trance, 
in the superior susceptibilities of hypnosis, in the 
inspirations of genius, in the peculiar endowments 
of gifted souls. The issue may be most tangibly 
presented when applied to the interpretation of 
the calculating prodigies, whose performances cer- 
tainly exhibit a more than ordinary development 
of some type of subconscious facility. In giving 
name to the theory in question, let it be the desig- 
nation in common use among its adherents: that 
of the subliminal self. It admits that a decided 
proficiency in rapid calculation may be devel- 
oped upon the basis of intensive cultivation and 
natural talent, and that performances so achieved 
may indeed be notable ; but it regards certain of 
these performances as not thus explicable, but as 
evidence of a wholly different mode of procedure. 
It points out that the performers are often boys of 
no high order of general intelligence, whose own 
accounts of their training and methods contain 
no adequate basis for such extreme facility, and 
who, indeed, regard themselves as the receptive 
instruments of a faculty that is somehow exer- 
cised through the agency of their mind, which 
passively receives the solutions as a revelation. 



534 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

While admitting, as applied to our general pro- 
ficiencies, that much of our intercourse is replete 
with short-circuiting processes, that our notes of 
experience are recorded in a mixture of long-hand 
and short-hand characters, in the interpretation 
of which we have acquired a facile talent, the 
view in question none the less holds that in unus- 
ual cases, characters appear that are not steno- 
graphic records of ordinary experience at all, but 
are of an independent alphabet, and bear a mes- 
sage removed from the ken of the mind that is 
ordinarily directive. 

In development of this conception, the theory 
discovers in hypnosis the exercise of a power by 
which is thus subliminally revealed knowledge that 
has no origin in the experiences open to the self 
that responds to the ordinary vicissitudes of life. 
It regards hallucinations as of the same status, 
and attempts to determine their import not from 
inner analysis, but from the detailed conformity 
of their content to objective fact, at times in 
anticipation of the future, at times in overcoming 
temporal and special limitations. The exalted sen- 
sibilities of hysteria are similarly appraised ; and 
alterations of personality become the most explicit 
expression of a release of the confined subliminal 
self, whose experiences, though seemingly trivial 
and chaotic, and for the most part admittedly deca- 
dent, are akin to the recondite sources from which, 



conclusion; 535 

by a different use of a common privilege, the 
exceptional man of genius draws his inspiration. 
The very latitude of this theory makes it hospit- 
able to a wide range of considerations, — many of 
them supported by questionable data and strained 
interpretations, — and renders it liable to affiliation 
with " occult " conceptions of every shade and 
grade of extravagance. This " tumbling ground 
for whimsies," in Professor James's phrase, there 
is no obligation to inspect. It is proper to direct 
attention to the serious shortcomings of the theory 
of the subliminal self, when most conservatively 
framed and when applied in the spirit of psycho- 
logy, not of a plea for the supernatural. 1 

1 It is not part of my purpose to enter into a controversial 
appraisal of the merits of this theory. To do so would require a 
judgment of the validity of a great range of evidence, much of it 
discerningly collected with due regard for the ordinary precautions 
to be exercised in the record of narratives that tax credibility, and 
more of it plainly worthless. I confine myself to the psychological 
legitimacy of the point of view, its logical warrant, and its capa- 
city to illuminate the general field to which it aspires. I must, 
however, refer to the fact that the popular adherence to views 
of this type may frequently proceed through certain weaknesses 
of the human mind, partly logical and partly psychological : the 
over-emphasis of personally interesting incidents, the insistence 
upon minute and individual explanations, the failure to appreci- 
ate inconsistencies with established principles, and possibly above 
all, a more or less disguised preference for beliefs in transcend- 
ent, or more plainly "occult," influences. Certain expressions of 
these tendencies, I have treated in another volume : Fact and Fable 
in Psychology, 1900. In the present connection I am considering 
only such formulation of the theory as accepts the obligation of 
compatibility with established psychological doctrine. 



536 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

In the appraisal of such a theory of interpreta- 
tion, two considerations are dominant, and each 
affects the other: the establishment of the facts, 
and their significance. Neither is quite so simple as 
appears in a cursory view. Whether a phenomenon 
— frequently involving an intimate circumstan- 
tial narrative — is discerningly reported cannot 
readily be decided, especially when an underlying 
interest in the pointing of the moral unwittingly 
adorns the tale. The inexplicable and the obvious, 
like the sublime and the ridiculous, at times are 
separated by a slight transition. Yet more influ- 
entially does the allegiance to certain trends of 
interpretation attract fairly simple facts from their 
natural habitat and give them an extraordinary 
setting; an allied tendency likewise determines 
the perspective of significance that is attached to 
common and creditable data. It is indeed the 
exceptional student of these phenomena whose 
adherence to such views is forced upon him by 
the demands of his logical convictions. In the 
decision between the interpretation here proposed 
and such other as may claim a hearing, there 
enters inevitably a large measure of general intel- 
lectual inclinations; and the issue must be left, 
as it may safely be, to the judgment of those 
whose critical acumen forms an adequate check 
upon their personal leanings. While logical argu- 
ments play a variable part in shaping convictions 



CONCLUSION 537 

in this domain, it is best to set forth in purely 
objective appraisal, the logical status of the the- 
ory that chiefly disputes the field with the one 
here supported. 

To begin with, it seems difficult to understand 
how such an independent, and in its essence 
transcendent capacity could have found mainte- 
nance in the evolutionary conditions of our being. 
To conceive it as an atavistic function that is in its 
decadence is clearly unnatural, because such func- 
tions can hardly be concerned with the econo- 
mies of elaborated and highly complex service; 
atavism is survival from below, not a culling from 
above. It can only be urged that consciousness 
is itself a lapsed function, adjusted to the present 
stages of evolution, and has thus replaced a form 
of psychic energy that existed previous to con- 
sciousness, and achieved a perfection of mental 
efficiency similar, though superior, to that offered 
by our present form of that privilege ; such issue 
was attained by service of susceptibilities now lost 
except in sporadic instances. Those who coura- 
geously embrace this view relieve themselves of 
further obligations to provide for subliminal func- 
tioning in normal life, and may be driven to this 
position by the difficulty of finding a place in the 
evolutionary field for a function of such occa- 
sional service and yet of such high potency and 
independent status. The feeble support that the 



538 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

conception finds when gauged by evolutionary 
standards is further disclosed in relation to the 
higher products of mental evolution. It seems a 
very mockery of that process to carry the devel- 
opment of the mind as the issue of tortuous and 
minute steps, laboriously and uncertainly attain- 
ing to its present stage of efficiency, and then to 
have these endowments and achievements outdone 
by a confined and untutored "double," that this 
same mind has all the while unwittingly nurtured. 
A complete parallel to such a supposition is not 
readily found; not wholly unlike it would be the 
assumption that the eyes were admittedly devel- 
oped by virtue of their utility as organs of vision, 
but that somewhere in the bodily economy — say 
under a fold of the skin — there exists an organ 
that by a survived potency from primeval days 
can now, with suppressed experience or service, 
occasionally convey to the mind, when the eyes 
are closed or when a saving blindness releases 
the imprisoned sense, the same type of visions as 
come through the retina, and yet more exalted 
ones. Until the conception can be better recon- 
ciled to evolutionary principles, it is highly im- 
probable that it will find support by appeal to 
other logical considerations. The theory exposes 
its further shortcomings by a necessary admission 
of a different status for that large range of abnor- 
mal experience, presenting phenomena wholly 



CONCLUSION 539 

parallel to those that it interprets in its own 
favor, but which are decidedly free from the fea- 
tures that require the assumption of the traits 
ascribed to the subliminal self. It is the less ur- 
gent to enforce these and related objections, for 
the reason that the theory, being but slightly 
restrained by exacting allegiance to the large 
body of normal data and by the systematic obli- 
gations thus incurred, has little difficulty in 
accommodating itself to the evasion of such objec- 
tions by yet further complications of like hypo- 
thetical nature. The Copernicans were quite 
ready, when the observed positions of the planets 
departed from the predictions based upon the 
supposition of the circular orbit, to "build, un- 
build, contrive," with "cycle and epicycle, orb 
in orb ; " the simplicity of the elliptical hypothe- 
sis of Kepler not alone did away with the cycles 
great and small, but rendered such questionable 
expedients unnecessary. 

Yet in the end, the main justification for intro- 
ducing any measure of controversy in a construc- 
tive essay is thereby to suggest how wholly 
transformed would be the interest, the interpreta- 
tion, and the perspective of the data, under an 
allegiance markedly different from that which has 
been maintained. The subconscious as a natural 
function with the most intimate relations to con- 
sciousness, subject with it to like influences, — 



540 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

both parts of a common synthesis, though of 
unlike service therein, — is a conception that in 
its origin, in the manner of its development, in its 
bearing upon specifically psychological issues, as 
well as upon the general view of life and mind, 
is diametrically opposed to that of the subliminal 
self. It is thus antagonistic by its support of a 
different logical attitude towards the spirit of sci- 
entific analysis, as well as towards the principles 
of the biological sciences ; and it is so specifically 
by virtue of the altered perspective that it intro- 
duces into the outlook upon the import of mental 
phenomena. Without mitigating this incompati- 
bility, it is proper to point out that in the intrinsic 
worth, and to a considerable measure the mutual 
relations assigned to the several groups of phe- 
nomena, the two views have a common interest, 
even common points of emphasis. Both find a 
place, though a different one, in the mental eco- 
nomy, for modes of achievement or for partici- 
pation therein, that are preponderantly not of the 
fully conscious order ; both recognize the disor- 
dering of mental impairment and the significance 
of variations in mental endowment, though with 
but modest agreement upon their interpretation; 
for the one view ever holds aloof from the super- 
natural implications of the other, and looks upon 
all the achievements of mind as brought about, 
not by any release of cramping limitations, but 



CONCLUSION 541 

by favoring development of the highest natural 
potentialities. 

The achievements of consciousness remain the 
notable ones in the story of man's occupation of his 
place in the world, as well as the central concern 
of a psychological interpretation of the endow- 
ment that thus finds comprehensive expression. 
Consciousness expresses itself as an individual 
organic achievement ; and by conservation of that 
integrating privilege, the individual develops his 
complex possibilities. The associations of the ab- 
normal mental life are not with higher potencies, 
through release of imprisoned powers, but stand 
as issues of impairments and losses, and for the 
most part in unqualified manner. Yet it is impor- 
tant to recognize that groups of relations appear- 
ing exaggeratedly or distortedly in certain tem- 
peraments, are suggestive, in others, of conditions 
favorable to the furtherance of achievements dis- 
tinctly to be prized. For there are types of con- 
sciousness common enough to be called normal 
that are yet undesirable ; it is only the ideal man 
who displays none but ideal forms of conscious- 
ness. There are all sorts of disabilities, enfeeble- 
ments, hesitations, entanglements, indicative of mild 
frailty. That these sickly casts of thought are on 
occasion removable by the efficiency of a condition 
in which such inhibitions are themselves released, 
and that by this aid the mind is liberated to more 



542 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 

natural expression, is abundantly established; for 
such is the principle that pervades alike the freer 
flow of soul under physiological stimulation or the 
psychic encouragement of a sympathetic audience, 
and the notable relief of nervous disabilities by 
hypnotic or mental suggestion. The relation is 
most readily extended to include within the tem- 
peramental field the enthusiasm of mood and in- 
terest and the goad of occasion, that unbend the 
natural energies to more fluent, more profitable, 
more inspired service. Such influences will be exer- 
cised most distinctively in those realms of thought 
that largely lie remote from conscious command, 
and like the emotional factors of our being, flour- 
ish in intimate dependence upon subconscious 
promptings and resources. 

The intellectual kingdom is not to be taken by 
storm ; the most insistent and strenuous efforts 
are not the wisest. Leisure is advised not alone 
by the festina lente of caution, but by the largest 
human experience that comes upon the choicest 
flowers in aimless loitering by the wayside. Na- 
ture provides for frequent and prolonged periods 
of abeyance, when are matured the supports of 
profitable advance. The point of view of con- 
sciousness is partial ; its service, however central 
to sustained purpose, finds many of the deeply 
cherished expressions of the self most feebly at its 
command. It is not alone important for the psy- 



CONCLUSION 543 

chological interpretation of the mental life, that 
the study of consciousness should be completed by 
an appreciation of the less explicit sources of its 
maintenance ; it is equally necessary for • the life 
that we live, that we should frequently permit the 
focus of our concerns and of our struggles to fade 
away, and allow the surgings from below to assert 
their influence. As in the very moment when the 
feeling of self-activity disappears, the immersion 
in the occupation is most complete, so equally in 
the cessation of striving and in the falling back 
upon the corrective support of the subconscious, 
the natural law of the mind's worthiest service 
finds its most characteristic expression. In this 
sense, all that is meant by culture establishes as 
intimate relations to the subconscious as to the 
conscious factors of the mind ; the knowledge 
that is conscious goes, and the wisdom lingers in 
the subconscious traits of character. 



INDEX 



Abnormal, method of, 163-165 ; 
range of, 165-168, 173, 406- 
408. 

Absent-mindedness, 51-53, 54, 55, 
131, 306, 307, 457 ; see also In- 
attentiveness, sensory ; also Ab- 
straction. 

Abstraction, 46, 48, 52-55, 136- 
138, 441, 442, 470, 471. 

Abulia, 315-318. 

Acquisition, 29, 30, 437, 457 ; see 
also Subconscious, acquisition. 

Action, as affected by mental con- 
dition, 23, 24, 28 ; as guided by 
sensation, 34, 35, 313-315, 317- 
319, 450-454, 455 ; higher and 
lower, 12, 25, 454-456 ; in trance- 
states, 342-344 ; see also Will ; 
also Subconscious, action. 

Alcohol, see Hallucinations. 

Alertness, as normal activity, 170, 
415, 416, 470, 471, 505-508, 
524. 

Alterations of personality, 323- 
333, 510-515, 521-523; cases 
cited, 394 (note) ; Beauchamp, 
Miss, 350-372; Bourne, Rev. 
Ansel, 386, 387 ; Emile X., 381, 
382 ; Felida X., 377-380 ; Han- 
na, Rev. Mr., 394-403 ; Louis V., 
381-384 ; Mr. S., 387, 388 ; Rey- 
nolds, Mary, 380, 381; Smith, 
Mile. Helene, 336-346 ; soldier, 
390-393; tinsmith, 388, 389; 
conflicts of, 352, 354, 356-358, 
365, 369, 370 ; contrasts of, 353, 
356-358, 361-364; genesis of, 
323-333, 336-338, 348, 349, 359, 
370, 371 ; intercourse of, 338, 



340, 354, 364-368, 396-403; 
lapses of, 374-377, 385, 389, 390, 
403-406 ; recovery from, 362- 
364, 397-403 ; reduction of func- 
tion in, 395, 405. 

Anaesthesia, psychic, 132, 366, 
367, 485-488, 497, 499, 511 ; in 
hypnotism, 280-282 ; in hysteria, 
306-313. 

Anaesthetics, 238, 239; revelation 
in, 245-251. 

Archimedes, 52. 

Association, 75, 76 ; by indirect 
fixation, 93-95 ; conscious, 77 ; in 
dreams, see Dream-movement ; 
subconscious, 370-372, 446, 447 ; 
support of, 79-81. 

Attention, distribution of, 50 ; see 
also Consciousness. 

Automatic activities, 31, 391-393 ; 
in hypnotism, 274 ; in somnam- 
bulism, 268, 269 ; primary and 
lapsed, 432-436. 

Automatic writing, 293, 294, 340, 
499 ; analysis of, 296-299. 

Awareness, see Consciousness. 

Beauchamp, Miss, see Alterations 
of personality, cases cited. 

Blake, 230. 

Bourne, Rev. Ansel, see Altera- 
tions of personality, cases cited. 

Brain, functions of, see Conscious- 
ness, and brain-functions. 

Chloroform, see Hallucinations ; 

also Anaesthetics. 
Clarke, Dr., cited, 255, 261. 
Cobb, Miss, 39 ; cited, 44. 



546 



INDEX 



Conduct, the factors of , 117; see 
also Elaboration ; also Expres- 
sion. 

Consciousness, and action, 23, 24, 
28-30, 451-455, 500-502; and 
brain-functions, 16-18, 23 (note), 
412 ; and emotions, 21, 22, 26, 
36, 113 ; and will, 35-38, 78, 154, 
156 ; antechamber of, 68, 69 ; 
concentrated states of, 51-53, 
56-58, 60-62, 479-481, 506-509 ; 
diffused states of, 56-58, 59, 60 ; 
distribution of, 13, 46, 50 ; expli- 
cit and implicit, 436, 437 ; func- 
tion of, 10-12, 411, 412 ; higher 
and lower forms of, 17, 20-25,38 ; 
in sleep, 416 (note) ; interference 
of, 21, 25-33 ; inwardly directed, 
7-12 ; organization of, 16, 17, 20 ; 
outwardly directed, 7-9 ; scope 
of, 5, 541 ; selective, 65-68, 419, 
420 ; subconscious contributions 
to, 419, 420, 425, 431, 462, 464, 
465 ; threshold of, 413-418, 423 ; 
utility of, 12-14, 33 ; unity, 372, 
373 ; wave of, 418 ; see also Self- 
consciousness. 

Crystal vision, 102, 103, 106, 107, 
226, 365, 366, 470, 514, 515. 

Dana, Dr., 387. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, 246. 

Delirium, 233-236. 

De Quincey, cited, 252-254, 262. 

Disposition, neural, 411. 

Disintegration, see Dissociation. 

Disqualification, see Alterations 
of personality; also Dissocia- 
tion. 

Dissociation, 266, 273, 515-517, 
522, 523, 525-527 ; analysis of, 
299-301, 319-322, 481-483; 
and personality, 319-322, 326, 
331-333 ; lighter phases of, 334- 
336. 

Dream-movement, 84, 85, 88, 89, 
175, 177-202, 212-221, 226- 



230, 472-476, 478-481, 508, 509, 
524 ; in transitional states, 180- 
187. 

Dreams and dreaming, 71 ; and 
dissociation, 329 ; anticipation in, 
214-216 ; as picture-sequences, 
197 ; dramatic element in, 92 ; 
elaboration in, 195, 198, 199, 
212-219; emotion in, 212, 213; 
factors in normal thought, 87, 
215 ; in contrast to alertness, 170, 
171; invention in, 71, 72; loss 
of control in, 219, 224 ; loss of 
responsibilities in, 217, 218 ; 
motor factor in, 199-206 ; organic 
factors in, 189, 190; physio- 
logical conditions of, 176-178 ; 
presentative element in, 188 ; 
rational factor in, 90-92, 206- 
208 ; reality of, 218 (note) ; re- 
presentative element in, 188 ; 
sensory element in, 188-196, 402 ; 
transitional types of, 224-230 ; 
variants of, 222. 

Drugs, psvchic effects of, 18, 19, 

231, 237-265, 477, 478. 

Elaboration, 117, 120, 444-449, 457. 

Ellis Havelock, cited, 257-259. 

Emile X., see Alterations of per- 
sonality, cases cited. 

Emotion, 113, 149, 153, 460, 461, 
467, 474 ; and personality, 146. 

Ether, see Anaesthetics ; see also 
Hallucinations. 

Expression, 150, 449, 456 (note). 

Facilitation, 80, 433-435, 467 ; as 
inspiration, 96. 

Felida X., see Alterations of per- 
sonality, cases cited. 

Flournoy, 336 ; see also Altera- 
tions of personality, cases cited, 
Smith, Mile. Helene. 

Galton, F., 180, 230; cited, 68, 
181. 



INDEX 



547 



Gladstone, 141. 

Goodhart, 394 ; see also Altera- 
tions of personality, cases cited, 
Rev. Mr, Hanna. 

Greenwood, F., cited, 85 (note), 
216, 229, 230. 

Habit, 12, 23, 37, 38-42, 118, 128, 
433-435 ; acquisition of, 40, 42 ; 
automatism of, 45, 46 ; expert 
stage of, 44 ; slight awareness of, 
30, 38-41, 47-49. 

Hallucinations, 232, 368, 474-479, 
491-494, 497 ; hypnagogic, 223, 
225 ; in hypnotism, 276 ; in tran- 
sitional states, 224-230 ; nega- 
tive, see Anaesthesia, psychic ; 
under alcohol, 260-263 ; under 
chloroform, 242, 247 ; under 
ether, 241, 243-245 ; under hash- 
eesh, 255-257 ; under mescal, 
2572-60; under nitrous-oxide gas, 
240, 242, 243, 246 ; under opium, 
252-255. 

Hamilton, W. R., 96. 

Hammond, Dr. W., 192, 208 (note), 
268 ; cited, 194, 195. 

Hanna, Rev. Mr., see Alterations 
of personality, cases cited. 

Hartmann, cited, 96. 

Hasheesh, see Hallucinations 

Hegel, 52. 

Herrick, 230. 

Hewitt, 239 (note). 

Hirth, Dr. Georg, 471 (note). 

Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, cited, 
72, 74, 251. 

Houdin, 44. 

Hypnotism, 271, 272-278, 353 
(note), 507-509, 524, 533 ; action 
in, 276, 277 ; anaesthesia in, 280- 
283 ; analysis of, 294-296 ; and 
normal consciousness, 287-292; 
see also Suggestion. 

Hysteria, general account of, 301- 
305 ; see also Alterations of 
personality. 



Imagery, see Dream-movement. 
Imagination, 71, 85. 
Impressionism, see Sensation, and 

impression. 
Impulsion, 497 ; see also Will. 
Inattentiveness, sensory, 51-53, 67, 

68 ; see also Absent-mindedness. 
Incorporation, 156, 438, 483-486 ; 

subconscious, 441-443. 
Incubation, 99, 100. 
Initiative, 35, 450-454, 456, 458, 

483-485, 498-502. 

James, Professor William, 146, 251 
(note), 386, 387, 535 ; cited, 
114,144,249,250,263. 

Janet, Professor P., 313 (note), 
321 (note). 

Kekule\ 95. 

Ladd, Professor G. T., cited, 230. 

Lamb, Charles, cited, 214. 

Lang, Andrew, 91 ; cited, 106. 

Lapses, of consciousness, 116 ; of 
confusion, 124-127 ; of omission, 
121 ; of orientation, 137 ; of per- 
sonality, 374 ; motor type of, 119- 
122 ; sensory type of, 131-136 ; 
to older habits, 128-130. 

Leland, C. G., cited, 96, 158. 

Louis V., see Alterations of per- 
sonality, cases cited. 

Luther, 223 (note). 

Maudsley, H, cited, 232 (note). 

Maury, A., 223, 229. 

Memory, 48, 75, 122, 155 ; of for- 
gotten impressions, 73-76, 101, 
105, 106, 133 ; in hypnosis, 287- 
294. 

Mercier, C. A., cited, 11 (note), 
75, 76. 

Mescal, see Hallucinations. 

Miss X., cited, 103 (note). 

Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, 259, 381 
(note) ; cited, 260. 



548 



INDEX 



Moliere, 72. 
Mood, favoring', 141. 
Moreau, Dr., cited, 257. 
Movement, see Action. 
Mr. S., see Alterations of person- 
ality, cases cited. 
Miinsterberg, Professor Hugo, 40. 

Nervousness, indications of, 27. 
Newbold, W. R., 90. 
Newton, 100. 

Nitrous-oxide gas, see Hallucina- 
tions. 

Opium, see Hallucinations. 

Orientation, 142-144, 324-327, 
483-485, 488-491, 494, 495 ; in 
dreams, 217, 218 ; loss of, 488- 
495. 

Palissy, 107. 

Paralysis, psychic, in hysteria, 
314-319. 

Pascal, 61. 

Personality, rival, 151, 152 ; and 
dissociation, 319-322, 519-521; 
see also Alterations of personal- 
ity. 

Prince, Dr. Morton, 349 (note), 
350-370 ; see also Alterations of 
personality, cases cited, Miss 
Beauehamp. 

Prodigies, calculating, 468, 469, 
533. 

Puffer, Miss E. D., 504 (note). 

Ramsay, Sir William, cited, 247, 

248. 
Revery, see Dream-movement. 
Reynolds, Mary, see Alterations of 

personality, cases cited. 
Royce, Professor Josiah, 80. 
Rudolf, 149 (note). 

Schiller, cited, 278. 
Schopenhauer, A., 99. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 154. 



Self -consciousness, 32, 140 ; see 
also Consciousness. 

Self-feelings, 143-145, 150, 155, 
325, 459, 462, 502-506; social, 
147. 

Sensation, aesthetic phases of, 426- 
428, 432 ; and consciousness, 
422, 429-431 ; and impression, 
421-425, 427-429 ; and memory, 
429-431 ; as clue to movement, 
38-40, 122, 130 ; in dreams, see 
Dreams ; subconscious status of, 
420-423. 

Sidis, Dr. Boris, 394 ; see also Al- 
terations of personality, cases 
cited, Rev. Mr. Hanna. 

Smith, Mile. Helene, see Altera- 
tions of personality, cases cited. 

Solomon, 299 (note). 

Somnambulism, 205, 206, 267-277, 
476. 

Stein, 299 (note). 

Stevenson, R. L., cited, 70-72. 

Subconscious, and evolution, 531, 
537-539; and genius, 159, 528; 
and hysteria, 301, 395, 512-515 ; 
association, 77, 78, 113, 123, 134, 
135, 447-449 ; acquisition, 111, 
112, 438-441 ; action, 120, 451- 
454 ; conception of, 411 ; habits, 
38-42, 47-49; inference, 108, 
109, 423, 424 ; influence of envi- 
ronment, 110, 111, 157; matur- 
ing of thought, 98 ; observation, 
104-107, 109. 

Subliminal self, theory of, 532- 
539. 

Subvoluntary, 451. 

Suggestion, in hysteria, 309 ; post- 
hypnotic, 283, 284 ; see also 
Hypnotism. 

Symonds, J. A., cited, 249. 

Tartini, 73. 

Temperament, 61 ; and hysteria, 

303, 304, 464-467. 
Thought, logical factor in, 84, 86 ; 



INDEX 



549 



movement of, 84, So ; see also 
Consciousness ; also Dream- 
movement. 
Trance-state, 336-446, 371, 372; 
analysis of, 347 ; see also Hyp- 
notism; also Dreams and dream- 
ing ; also Alterations of per- 
sonality. 

Unconscious^ 97. 



Unconsciousness, 18. 
University of Wisconsin, 118. 

Will, impairment of, by sugges- 
tion, 275, 285 ; in hysteria, 314- 
319 ; and consciousness, 299- 
301 ; see also Action ; also Con- 
sciousness, and action. 

Zerstreutheit, 117, 471 (note). 



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